Title: The Mentor: The Cradle of Liberty, Vol. 6, Num. 10, Serial No. 158, July 1, 1918
Author: Hart, Albert Bushnell
Language: English
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                    THE MENTOR 1918.07.01, No. 158,
                         The Cradle of Liberty

                            LEARN ONE THING
                               EVERY DAY

                  JULY 1 1918          SERIAL NO. 158

                                  THE
                                MENTOR

                             THE CRADLE OF
                                LIBERTY

                        By ALBERT BUSHNELL HART
                        Professor of Government
                          Harvard University

                   DEPARTMENT OF           VOLUME 6
                   HISTORY                NUMBER 10

                          TWENTY CENTS A COPY



LIBERTY


Liberty is older than Law, older than Government, older than the State.
Liberty goes back to the Garden of Eden, where first was taught the
bitter lesson that where Liberty is uncontrolled, society breaks down.
The word is a splendid one, coined by the Romans, “With a great price
obtained I this freedom,” said the Roman centurion; “But I was free
born,” replied St. Paul. Liberty was in the hearts of the English
colonists; Liberty rang out from the Bell of Independence Hall; Liberty
is stamped upon our state and federal constitutions. For Liberty
millions of men have struggled and died. Toward Liberty oppressed
myriads are stretching out their hands today. Liberty is the pole-star
of peoples, the hope of mankind.



[Illustration: FANEUIL HALL, BOSTON, MASS.--“THE CRADLE OF LIBERTY”]



_THE CRADLE OF LIBERTY_

_Faneuil Hall_

ONE


    “In old Faneuil, that guild temple of traders and aldermen,
    butchers and clerks, hucksters and civic magistrates, the
    spirit of the people conceived an embryonic nation.”

Among early Bostonians who owned argosies and had a prosperous trade
with France and England was a young bachelor named Peter Faneuil,
who, like Paul Revere, was descended from Huguenot refugees. He was
the heir of his uncle, Andrew Faneuil, who died in 1738 and left a
large fortune. Fond of good living and hospitable, “Here’s to Peter
Faneuil!” was the toast often proposed above brimming bumpers. From
Madeira he ordered amber wine, from London, chariots and sets of
crested harness, and fine stuffs, buttons and laces. His ships carried
cargoes of tobacco, black walnut, fish, stoves and general merchandise.
At forty years of age he was a prince among Colonial merchants. He
had, moreover, pride in Boston’s advancement, and offered “at his own
cost and charge” to build a market for “the use, benefit and advantage
of the town.” Later, the donor of the market house instructed his
architect, the renowned John Smibert, to add a hall above the space
given over to provisioners’ stalls. In 1742 the two-story brick
building was completed. When Peter Faneuil received the formal thanks
of Boston, he made the prophetic response, “I hope what I have done
will be for the service of the whole country.” A year later he died,
and was buried in the Granary Burying Ground.

The chamber over the market became the seat of public offices, and, as
the Town Hall, was in demand for patriotic celebrations, debates and
banquets. In 1761, all of the structure except the walls was destroyed
by fire. As no benevolent townsman offered to duplicate Faneuil’s
gift, the selectmen were empowered to raise the necessary funds for
rebuilding by holding a lottery. “Faneuil Hall Lottery Tickets” bore
the signature of John Hancock, then a young politician of promise. In
1763 the reconstructed Town Hall was ready for occupancy. It was this
rebuilt meeting-place that became the forum of free speech in Boston,
the Altar of Liberty from which rose the flame that “roused a depressed
people from want and degradation. Here those maxims of political truth
which have extended an influence over the habitable globe, and have
given rise to new republics, were first promulgated.”

The Stamp Act (1765) was denounced within its arched and pillared
walls, and the repeal celebrated with festivities. Revenue laws were
discussed, and when troops were ordered to the provincial capital,
a convention in session here raised a fearless voice in defence of
Colonial independence. The day following the massacre of the fifth
of March, 1770, a mass meeting was called in the Hall, but so many
citizens responded that it was necessary to repair to Old South Church,
where there was more room. Early in November, 1773, John Hancock
presided over a Town Hall meeting, the object of which was to protest
against threatened importations of tea by the East India Company of
London. At numerous conclaves the tea question continued to agitate the
grave townsfolk, until on December sixteenth a group of patriots in the
disguise of Indians summarily put an end to discussion by dumping the
cargoes of the newly-arrived tea ships into Boston harbor.

Faneuil Hall echoed to vigorous protests against the Port Bill,
which so vitally affected Boston commerce, and from the same “Old
Faneuil” printed letters were dispatched to the other colonies for the
purpose of presenting facts and securing coöperation against proposed
aggressions by the mother country. At Faneuil Hall representatives
of General Gage assembled one tragic day to receive the arms of the
Bostonians. In joyous contrast were the meetings held in the honored
edifice after the evacuation of the city by British troops.

French naval officers and the Marquis de Lafayette were feasted here;
two presidents, George Washington and John Adams, were guests of
honor at Faneuil Hall banquets; and in 1793 the execution of Louis
XVI was celebrated by sons of freedom who sympathized with the French
Revolutionists.

In the year 1806 the sturdy building was remodeled and enlarged. During
the naval war with England, citizens again held meetings in the Town
Hall to inveigh against renewed violations of their “national rights
and sovereignty.” In the “Cradle of Liberty” Charles Francis Adams,
Daniel Webster, Wendell Phillips, Edward Everett, Rufus Choate and
Charles Sumner championed justice and democracy. In 1834, at a memorial
meeting for Lafayette held in Faneuil, Edward Everett delivered one
of his most glowing and eloquent orations, in which he extolled the
departed French patriot as the “Lover of Liberty.” Referring to the
Hall in which he spoke, he said, “The spirit of the departed is in high
communion with the spirit of this place.”

  PREPARED BY THE EDITORIAL STAFF OF THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION
  ILLUSTRATION FOR THE MENTOR, VOL. 6, No. 10, SERIAL No. 158
  COPYRIGHT, 1918, BY THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION, INC.



[Illustration: OLD NORTH CHURCH, BOSTON, MASS.--ASSOCIATED WITH THE
RIDE OF PAUL REVERE]



_THE CRADLE OF LIBERTY_

_Paul Revere_

TWO


Though Paul Revere performed bravely and well numerous patriotic duties
assigned to him, most early historians of the Revolution forgot even to
mention his name in recounting the crucial events of April, 1775. He
lives in our memory today chiefly because one valorous deed of his, in
that month of valorous deeds, was made the subject of a popular poem.
Nearly ninety years after the Ride, Longfellow rescued the Midnight
Messenger from oblivion, and gave him a place among Revolutionary
heroes.

Apollos Rivoire, father of Paul, was a native of the Island of
Guernsey, and came of Huguenot stock. A fugitive in search of freedom,
he found a home in Boston, where on January 1, 1735 (new style), the
son was born who was to establish in the annals of his country the
Anglicized name of liberty-loving French ancestors. Father and son were
metal craftsmen and wrought fine tableware, many examples of which are
still in existence. Paul was a skilful designer, and a cartoonist of
wit and imagination. But of far greater importance to his associates,
he was an up-and-ready sort of person, keen for any task that gave vent
to an ardent nature--always in the thick of everything. He was a moving
spirit in various secret organizations, had an active part in the Tea
Party, and because he was bold and dependable was chosen to carry the
news of Boston’s successful exploit to sympathizers in New York, and
speed it on to Philadelphia. Following a ride of Revere’s in December,
1774, to Durham and Portsmouth, the provincials secured powder and
ammunition from Fort William and Mary that actually saved the day at
the Battle of Bunker Hill.

Early in 1775 Revere engaged with other patriots to patrol the Boston
streets and keep advised as to the movements of the redcoats. On April
15th they reported the British camp unwontedly astir. The next day,
Sunday, Revere took a message from Dr. Warren to Lexington, where
Hancock and Adams, on whose heads a price had been set by the king,
were lodging. Upon receiving the messenger’s news of British activities
the adjourned Provincial Congress re-assembled in Concord and began
immediate preparation against attack on the colony’s stores. Here let
us read the account of “the express” himself, an account at variance
with the familiar rhymed version, especially in respect to the lantern
signals, and his arrival at the journey’s end.

“On Tuesday evening, the 18th, it was observed that a number of
soldiers were marching towards the bottom of the Common (thus
indicating to Revere and his fellow-watchers that the troops were
about to leave Boston by water). About ten o’clock Dr. Warren sent in
great haste for me, and begged that I would immediately set off for
Lexington, where Messrs. Hancock and Adams were.… When I got to Dr.
Warren’s house, I found he had sent an express by land to Lexington, a
Mr. William Dawes.… The Sunday before.… I agreed with a Colonel Conant
(at Charlestown, across the river from Boston) that if the British went
out by water we would shew two lanthorns in the North Church steeple:
and if by land, one, as a signal.… I left Dr. Warren, called upon a
friend, and desired him to make the signals.… Two friends rowed me
across Charles River, a little to the eastward where the _Somerset_
man-of-war lay.… I met Colonel Conant, and several others; they said
they had seen our signals.… I set off upon a very good horse; it was
then about eleven o’clock, and very pleasant.” It is plain that the
signals were not for the messenger, as related by Longfellow, but were
intended to flash the intelligence to the people and militia that the
British were advancing.

Revere was in constant danger of being overtaken by the entire force,
which had embarked at Boston almost at the moment he was reaching the
Charlestown shore. Riding at top speed he reached Medford. “I awaked
the captain of the Minute Men; and after that I alarmed almost every
house, till I got to Lexington. I found Messrs. Hancock and Adams at
the Rev. Mr. Clarke’s; I told them my errand, and inquired for Mr.
Dawes.”

When the latter arrived, the two set out for Concord, six miles
distant. On the road they were overtaken by a young Dr. Prescott, and
all three proceeded to wake the sleeping households along the highway.
Suddenly, Revere, riding ahead, was surrounded by four armed redcoats.
With William Dawes he was forced into a pasture and detained, while
Dr. Prescott, “jumped his horse over a low stone wall, and got to
Concord.” Revere was led back toward Lexington, but at the sound of
guns his captors seized his mount and let him continue alone on foot.
In Lexington he saved important papers of Hancock’s, and witnessed the
first exchange of shots between the provincials and the British.

“Old North Church,” Boston, still stands on the original ground where
it was erected in 1723. From “the highest window in the wall” the
sexton hung the warning lights. The face of the tower bears a tablet to
the memory of the dauntless and resourceful Messenger of Liberty.

    “Through the gloom and the light
    The Fate of a nation was riding that night;
    And the spark struck out by that steed, in his flight
    Kindled the land into flame with its heat.”

  PREPARED BY THE EDITORIAL STAFF OF THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION
  ILLUSTRATION FOR THE MENTOR, VOL. 6, No. 10, SERIAL No. 158
  COPYRIGHT, 1918, BY THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION, INC.



[Illustration: THE LINE OF THE MINUTE MEN, LEXINGTON, MASS.]



_THE CRADLE OF LIBERTY_

_Lexington Green_

THREE


During the years immediately preceding the conflict on Lexington
Green, the temper of the Colonials was sorely tested by persecutions
instigated by Tyrant George III--“the Stamp Act, its repeal, with
the declaration of the right to tax America; the landing of troops
in Boston, beneath the batteries of fourteen vessels of war, lying
broadside to the town, with springs on their cables, their guns loaded,
and matches smoking; the repeated insults, and finally the massacre
of the fifth of March resulting from this military occupation; and
the Boston Port Bill, by which the final catastrophe was hurried
on.” Delegates were appointed to the Continental Congress; at Salem
the Provincial Congress was formed in October, 1774. At Concord and
Cambridge the latter assembly enacted measures providing for troops,
officers and stores. Early in the year 1775 it was clear that the
crisis was at hand. General Gage betrayed his intentions when in March
he caused the stone walls to be leveled that divided the fields about
Boston, and so made these peaceful pastures ready for battle. His spies
obtained information as to the amount of provisions hoarded at Concord
and Worcester. On the fifteenth of April patriots in Boston were
convinced that the plans of the British were mature, and an attack on
Concord was imminent. By advice of Hancock and “Sam” Adams the stores
were distributed among neighboring towns. Colonel Revere delivered his
first warning, and “at length the momentous hour arrived, as big with
consequences to Man as any that ever struck in his history.”

Though British officers were ignorant of the means by which Gage was
to assail American freedom, the provincials already knew, and were
prepared. The lanterns in North Church tower had signaled their message
to watchers in Charlestown, and Revere and Dawes were already on their
separate ways, when eight hundred grenadiers and light infantrymen
landed at East Cambridge and crossed the marshland to the road that
led to Lexington and Concord. At dawn the Minute Men were alive to the
warning given by bells and drums that the enemy was approaching; three
score or more answered the call to arms on Lexington Green--“a little
band of farmers on their own training-field, facing the veteran ranks
of the king.… Their homes, their property, personal and communal, and
their rights as freemen were threatened; they were patriots and heroes,
everyone.”

Commanded with threats and oaths to lay down his arms, Captain Parker
of the militia cried to his men: “Don’t fire unless you are fired on;
but if they want a war, let it begin here.” In the ensuing assault
several militiamen fell, wounded to the death. The blood they spilled
baptized the cause of Freedom in a new land. Resolved to die rather
than submit, their martyrdom fixed the resolution of all their brothers
in the Colonies.

Here, three-quarters of a century later, in “the birthplace of
American liberty,” Louis Kossuth, the Hungarian patriot, eulogized
“the embattled farmers” of immortal memory in these eloquent phrases:
“It is their sacrificed blood in which is written the preface of your
nation’s history. Their death was and ever will be the first bloody
revelation of America’s destiny, and Lexington the opening scene of a
revolution destined to change the character of human governments, and
the condition of the human race.”

“The Minute Man of the Revolution!” exclaims George William Curtis.
“And who was he? He was the husband and father, who left the plough in
the furrow, the hammer on the bench, and, kissing wife and children,
marched to die or be free!… This was the Minute Man of the Revolution!
The rural citizen, trained in the common school, the town meeting,
who carried a bayonet that _thought_, and whose gun, loaded with a
principle, brought down, not a man, but a system!”

A youth who fought the king’s men that wonderful day described how they
pushed the British back from Concord Bridge, back through Lincoln,
Arlington, Cambridge and Somerville to the Charles. “What could be
more pleasing to ambition,” he wrote, “than to knock off the shackles
of despotism? Freedom was the hobby I mounted, sword in hand, neck or
nothing, life or death. I will be one to support my country’s rights
and gain its independence!”

“What was the matter, and what did you mean in going to the fight?” one
of a later generation asked a veteran of Concord. “Young man,” was the
reply, “what we meant in fighting was this: We always had been free,
and we meant to be free always.”

  PREPARED BY THE EDITORIAL STAFF OF THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION
  ILLUSTRATION FOR THE MENTOR, VOL. 6, No. 10, SERIAL No. 158
  COPYRIGHT, 1918, BY THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION, INC.



[Illustration: FROM THE PAINTING BY JOHN TRUMBULL. ORIGINAL IN THE
CAPITOL, WASHINGTON, D. C.

SIGNING THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE]



[Illustration]


The Declaration of Independence is here reproduced in miniature--not
for reading purposes; that would be too severe a tax on the
eyesight--but simply to show the form and style of the historic
Document. The original of this Document is preserved in the Department
of State, Washington, carefully protected against light and air.

As may be seen, the Declaration bears the date July 4, 1776, and this
is accepted as the Birthday of Independence. On July 3rd and 4th the
Declaration was debated and the convention voted in favor of it, and
authorized the presiding officer, John Hancock, and the secretary,
Charles Thomson, to sign the Document. There was no single hour during
which all signed. It was a matter of weeks. All came to it finally,
for, as Benjamin Franklin shrewdly observed, “We must all hang
together, or else we shall all hang separately.”

  PREPARED BY THE EDITORIAL STAFF OF THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION
  ILLUSTRATION FOR THE MENTOR, VOL. 6, No. 10, SERIAL No. 158
  COPYRIGHT, 1918, BY THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION, INC.



[Illustration: IN INDEPENDENCE HALL, PHILADELPHIA, PA.

THE LIBERTY BELL]



_THE CRADLE OF LIBERTY_

_The Liberty Bell_

FIVE


The Philadelphians, having outgrown the primitive “Towne House”
that had served the community’s needs since 1709, undertook in
1729 to erect an Assembly building commensurate with the growing
importance of the province. A dozen years later the new State House
was completed, including the dignified chamber now famous as the Hall
in which the Declaration of Independence was discussed and received
its first signatures. Another decade passed before sufficient funds
were available for the rearing of a frame steeple on the south side
of the building, “with a suitable place thereon for hanging a bell.”
To grace this steeple and call together the Provincial Fathers,
whose meeting-place was in one of the rooms below, it was decided
after prolonged discussion that a bell be ordered from England. A
letter dated November 1, 1751, was forthwith dispatched from the
Superintendents of the State House to the Colonial agent in London,
asking that he purchase “a good bell, of about two thousand pounds
weight, the cost of which we may presume may amount to about one
hundred pounds sterling, or, perhaps, with the charges, something
more.… Let the bell be cast by the best workmen, and examined carefully
before it is shipped, with the following words well shaped in large
letters around it, viz:

    ‘By order of the Assembly of the Province of Pennsylvania, for
    the State House in the city of Philadelphia, 1752.’

And underneath,

    ‘Proclaim Liberty through all the land, to all the inhabitants
    thereof.--Levit. XXV. 10.’”

Within a year a ship bearing the new bell was reported at the
water-front, and eager citizens thronged the pier hoping to see it.
The arrival of the State House bell, destined none knew to what
great mission, was the chief interest of that August day in Quaker
Philadelphia. To the chagrin of the Superintendents they were compelled
to announce a few days later that the long-looked-for bell had “cracked
by a stroke of the clapper without any other violence, as it was hung
up to try the sound.” Two “ingenious workmen” essayed to recast the
metal, to which a larger proportion of copper had been added, and in
April, 1753, artisans raised the “American bell” to its place in the
steeple. Later on it was cast again, because the metal composition was
now thought to contain too much copper. The result, we are told, was
but tolerably successful. However, this “new great bell” continued
in service for over sixty years. It announced the convening of the
Assembly and the courts, and for a time was used to summon church-goers
on Sunday.

The voice of the bell joined in joyful celebration with that of the
people when the odious Stamp Act was repealed; late in the year 1773
it witnessed the agitated remonstrances of the inhabitants against the
proposed importations of taxed tea. On September 5, 1774, the First
Continental Congress convened in Carpenter’s Hall, Philadelphia. It
convened again the following May in the State House, and paved the way
to the Declaration of Independence. When the Battle of Lexington was
reported on an April day, the State House bell summoned to the historic
enclosure called the “Yard” a company of eight thousand people,
determined to defend “with arms their lives, liberty and property,
against all attempts to deprive them of them.”

Matters were hurrying to the breaking-point when in June, 1776, the
State Assembly received the resolutions of the General Convention
of Virginia, which forecast in sentiment and wording the final
Declaration. Two days later the National Assembly, also in session
at the State House, took the first step toward the Colonies’ Magna
Charta when the resolution was read and seconded “That these United
Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent states.”
A committee on the Declaration of Independence was chosen; July
second the “Resolution respecting Independency” was confirmed by
representatives of all the colonies except New York. For two days it
was debated, on the evening of the fourth day of July it was passed,
and the next day it was officially promulgated. On July eighth the
Declaration of Independence was read from a balcony in the State House
square, and the bell, which for a quarter of a century had awaited this
moment to fulfill the prophecy of its Biblical quotation, proclaimed
free and independent the Colonies of America.

The bell’s period of service was finally closed exactly forty-nine
years after that day of rejoicing, when in tolling for the death of
Chief Justice John Marshall its sides again cracked. It was then
removed from the steeple, and now remains a monument in Independence
Hall to the days when American Liberty was young.

  PREPARED BY THE EDITORIAL STAFF OF THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION
  ILLUSTRATION FOR THE MENTOR, VOL. 6, No. 10, SERIAL No. 158
  COPYRIGHT, 1918, BY THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION, INC.



[Illustration: FROM A PHOTOGRAPH TAKEN IN INDEPENDENCE HALL.

CHILDREN OF LIBERTY]



_THE CRADLE OF LIBERTY_

_Children of Liberty_

SIX


        “Here the heart
    May give an useful lesson to the head,
    And learning wiser grow without his books.”
                             --_William Cowper_

Youthful feet that wander through the classic halls of the old
Pennsylvania State House (Independence Hall) pause longest before
reminders of the first republic’s first president. To the children of
Liberty, the name of Washington, “Freedom’s first and favorite son,”
“the ideal type of civic virtue to succeeding generations,” sums up
all the elements of patriotism. “Washington is the mightiest name on
earth,” declared Abraham Lincoln, “long since mightiest in the cause
of civil liberty, still mightiest in moral reformation.” Hear Daniel
Webster: “The name of Washington is intimately blended with whatever
belongs most essentially to the prosperity, the liberty, the free
institutions, and the renown of our country.”

To the youth of the land this lustrous name is synonymous with Freedom,
whose lessons they begin to learn in their primers. In the classroom,
scholars receive instruction in loyalty to country, and initial
training for their future obligations as citizens. The schools shelter
the reserve forces of the nation, just as tender saplings are nurtured
until the time when they will be uprooted and set in the open, to brave
the winds that smite the forest. “Thy safeguard, Liberty, the school
shall ever be.”

The inspirational sources of the country’s power, the mighty principles
of its Constitution, are part of the teaching prescribed in American
educational institutions. In recent years state legislatures have
enacted laws providing for the display of the flag during school hours,
for ceremonies that include a salute to Old Glory at the opening of
each school day, for the observance of national holidays by special
exercises, and for military instruction of public school pupils.

The promotion of patriotic study in the schools has, very
appropriately, been fostered by bodies of Civil War veterans and
allied organizations. Recognizing that “the training of citizens in
the common knowledge and in the common duties of citizenship belongs
irrevocably to the State,” wise leaders have consistently impressed
upon the students under their care that a share in the safety of
American freedom rests upon them. Programs comprising military drills,
camp life, first aid, nursing, and the conservation of food supplies
are in force, or contemplated, in many schools throughout the United
States, such instruction frequently being under control of the Federal
Government.

That patriotism is something more than a sentiment is the principle
that modern school children are learning. In the United States there
is a marked revival of interest in history, civics, and national
traditions, and an accelerated curiosity among both native and
foreign-born youth as to the circumstances that led to the founding of
the Republic, and the patriots that sponsored its creation.

“The sheet-anchor of the Ship of State is the common school. Let
no youth leave the school without being thoroughly grounded in the
history, the principles, and the incalculable blessings of liberty. Let
the boys be the trained soldiers of constitutional freedom, the girls
the intelligent mothers of freemen.”

The accompanying gravure makes an especial appeal because of its
simplicity. There is no posing in this group. The utter unconsciousness
of the children, standing agaze before Washington’s portrait, is
evidence enough of the deep-rooted feelings that hold them there in
silent contemplation of the Father of their Country.

  PREPARED BY THE EDITORIAL STAFF OF THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION
  ILLUSTRATION FOR THE MENTOR, VOL. 6, No. 10, SERIAL No. 158
  COPYRIGHT, 1918, BY THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION, INC.



    THE MENTOR · · JULY 1, 1918
    DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY

_The_ CRADLE _of_ LIBERTY

By ALBERT BUSHNELL HART

_Professor of Government, Harvard University_

    _MENTOR GRAVURES_

    FANEUIL HALL BOSTON, MASS.

    OLD NORTH CHURCH BOSTON, MASS.

    THE LINE OF THE MINUTE MEN LEXINGTON, MASS.

    _MENTOR GRAVURES_

    SIGNING THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE By John Trumbull

    THE LIBERTY BELL

    CHILDREN OF LIBERTY

[Illustration: LIBERTY ENLIGHTENING THE WORLD

The Statue of Liberty is 151 feet high, standing on a granite pedestal
155 feet high. It was designed by the French sculptor, Frédéric
Auguste Bartholdi. The cost, over a million francs, was subscribed by
the people of France. The pedestal cost $250,000, raised by popular
subscription in the United States. The statue was unveiled on October
28, 1886.]

    Entered as second-class matter March 10, 1913, at the
    postoffice at New York, N. Y., under the act of March 3, 1879.
    Copyright, 1918, by The Mentor Association, Inc.


Singularly enough, the freest people on earth are not the happiest
(using the word “free” in the broadest sense). The Esquimaux and the
Australian “black fellows” know no hours of labor, no restriction on
their movements, no courts to punish offences; yet, by all accounts,
their lives are filled with danger, disease, and famine. Real liberty
comes into being only when men feel the contact of freemen with
freemen. Liberty flourishes where men are gathered into communities,
because every man must accept some abridging of that perfect freedom
which the lowest savages enjoy. The essence of liberty is to recognize
other people’s liberty--and that means some restrictions all around;
thus arises the system of balance and elastic government which we call
democracy.

[Illustration: PLYMOUTH ROCK

The granite boulder enclosed by this memorial shrine is a fragment
(broken off in 1774) of the large flat rock where the Pilgrims
landed--which lies near the sea and is now covered by a wharf]

Take an example of unlicensed liberty from the bumblebees, who have
their own way, though unloved, while the honey-bees are citizens of
a state, everyone going armed, as becomes a race renowned for its
preparedness. The bees, however, are monarchists, who will fight
and die for a sovereign queen whom they have never seen. So, at the
opposite pole from the care-free, house-free--and often food-free
savage, we may find a mass of individuals clustered in an empire, and
obedient to the scepter or the nod of a personal sovereign.

Why do men with minds and wills accept personal sovereigns? Many times
for safety. The beginning of kings is the soldier-chief, that “man on
horseback,” who has been the destruction of commonwealths, and yet has
founded many states,--first conqueror and then despot. As Daddy Smith
said in the Massachusetts ratifying convention of 1788, in describing
the social disturbances of Shays’ Rebellion, “Our distress was so great
that we should have been glad to catch at anything that looked like a
government for protection. Had any person that was able to protect us
come and set up his standard, we should all have flocked to it, even if
it had been a _monarch_, and that monarch might have proved a tyrant,
so that you see that anarchy leads to tyranny, and better have _one_
tyrant than so many at once.”

[Illustration: FANEUIL HALL IN 1789

The second Faneuil Hall. As rebuilt after the fire of 1761]

[Illustration: INTERIOR OF FANEUIL HALL]


_Ancient Despotism_

One would expect to find the cradle of liberty in the cradle of
the civilized human race, that is in that once wealthy valley of
Mesopotamia. Whatever the previous organization of family or tribe or
clan, the earliest organized states of which we have a record were the
mighty empires of Babylon and Assyria, the closest-knit monarchies
of history, whose kings compared themselves with divinities and were
worshiped as gods. What opportunity was there for the individual?
The Great King lived in one world and all his subjects in another.
The Assyrian sculptures tell how Sargon and Assurbanipal relieved the
oppressed that ventured to strive for home rule! Shattered, pierced,
impaled, these aspirants for liberty served to illustrate the absolute
power of their masters. Yet despotism proved then, as it will in future
prove, that when liberty is strangled, power departs; for all those
vast empires fell before the armies of other invaders and conquerors.

[Illustration: OLD STATE HOUSE, BOSTON, MASS.

Erected in 1748, and now under the guardianship of the Bostonian
Society]

Throughout later history the same effort has been made to corral human
beings into a nation controlled over their heads by self-appointed
rulers. Many dynasties began their power by seizing the citadel,
destroying the freedom of their subjects, raising an army that should
depend on them for pay and honors, and thus founding a lineage of
sovereigns, who presently began to call themselves “Kings by the grace
of God.” What mattered it that Dionysius, self-appointed Tyrant of
Syracuse, built temples to the gods, offered splendid prizes for horse
races, and rewarded sculptors? Did he not at the same time plunder
and oppress his fellow-citizens, and murder his critics? With all his
splendor he was a paltry adventurer, a thief, a usurper, a robber of
liberty!


_Beginnings of Liberty_

The spirit of the tyrant has infuriated thousands of chieftains,
despots, princes, dukes, sultans, monarchs, sovereigns and emperors,
all the way through history; and all the way there has been the
counterbalancing force of men who would rather die than submit to an
absolute master; men who did die to keep their families and friends
and countrymen from bondage. The original cradle of liberty was in the
hearts of free men and women, in the villages of the Slavs, among the
turbulent Goths, in the republics of Greece and Rome, in the mountains,
where it is easy for small groups to defend their own valleys and
upland plateaus. Even in those communities part of the people often
claimed superior privileges, and many free groups changed into the form
that passed for liberty during medieval times, when a small top stratum
of nobles and landowners claimed to be a master group, and trampled on
the dependent races or men of their own race who furnished them with
their daily bread.

[Illustration: THE BOSTON MASSACRE, MARCH 5, 1770

The result of an encounter between a British sentry and the crowd

From the engraving by Paul Revere]

[Illustration: THE BOSTON TEA PARTY]

From the fall of the Roman Empire to the French Revolution--a space of
thirteen centuries--the only real republican governments were mountain
peoples and independent trading cities, in which again the voting class
was in small proportion. The only factors that ardently strove for
liberty were the knights and noblemen, who did their best to weaken
the power of the kings, so that they might have the more authority
over their own vassals. The Middle Ages and even the period of the
Restoration, with its appeal to the right to choose one’s own religion
and to achieve one’s own salvation, did little to relieve the serf, the
peasant, and the poor workman.

[Illustration: TABLET CELEBRATING THE BOSTON TEA PARTY

The inscription reads: “Here formerly stood Griffin’s wharf, at which
lay moored on December 16, 1773, three British ships with cargoes of
tea. To defeat King George’s trivial but tyrannical tax of three pence
a pound, about ninety citizens of Boston, partly disguised as Indians,
boarded the ships, threw the cargoes, three hundred and forty-two
chests in all, into the sea, and made the world ring with the patriotic
exploit of the Boston Tea Party.”]


_English Liberty_

Against this gloomy background rose the wondrous structure of English
liberty. At first the English people under their Norman kings were no
freer than other peoples: England contained serfs and even slaves.
The only people that had a share in the government were the Norman
nobles who were sometimes consulted on the making of laws, and they
were not different from the nobles that tried to divide power with
the sovereigns of France and Sweden and the Germanic countries. The
difference was that the dukes and counts and barons in most parts of
Europe lost ground before the growth of an arbitrary royal power, while
the English lords banded together successfully to secure pledges from
their kings. In 1215 they wrung from King John the magnificent Magna
Charta, including the glorious privileges that: “No freeman shall be
taken or imprisoned, or disseised, or outlawed, or banished, or any way
destroyed, nor will we pass upon him, nor will we send upon him, unless
by the lawful judgment of his peers, or by the law of the land. We will
sell to no man, we will not deny or delay to any man, either justice or
right.”

[Illustration: Original painting by Peter Frederick Rothermel (born
1817)

PATRICK HENRY ADDRESSING THE VIRGINIA ASSEMBLY IN 1765

Henry, supporting the resolutions to resist the Stamp Act, at one point
exclaimed, “Caesar had his Brutus, Charles the First his Cromwell,
and George the Third--” “Treason! treason!” shouted the Speaker of
the Assembly. “Treason! treason!” shouted the members--“and,” Henry
continued, “George the Third may profit by their example. If this be
treason, make the most of it!”]

Here we have at last a cradle of liberty; for the personal rights
exacted by the nobles passed over to freemen, and in course of time all
Englishmen became freemen. It was centuries before the kings at last
gave way to the principle that the people through their representatives
in Parliament ruled even the Crown; and in the process King Charles
I lost his head, and King James II lost his throne. In the end, all
the men and women of the realm were recognized as having the personal
rights expressed in royal charters and acts of Parliament, which set
them free from arbitrary taxes, arbitrary arrests, and arbitrary
punishments.

They were entitled also to a tradition of common law, based on ideas of
freedom, enforced for their benefit by independent courts and protected
by trial by jury. Hence the England of the seventeenth century, from
which the first colonists proceeded to North America, was that part
of the globe in which law-abiding men and women had the largest
opportunity of living their own lives, enjoying the fruits of their own
labor, and dwelling under their own government.


_Colonial Liberty_

[Illustration: HISTORIC BRIDGE, CONCORD, MASS.

Showing battleground, and, across the bridge, the statue of the Minute
Man by the sculptor, Daniel Chester French]

Writers often speak of our present American system of government as
founded upon the British practices of personal liberty and local self
government and a free parliament. This is not accurate: Both our
state and federal governments have borrowed little directly from the
British parliamentary governing system. We have made our constitutions
while Great Britain had none; we have organized a system of cabinet
government, very different from that of parliamentary responsibility;
we expanded our suffrage, and England slowly followed on that highway
of liberty.

[Illustration: BUNKER HILL MONUMENT

Charlestown, Mass. A granite obelisk, 221 feet high, erected 1825-42 to
commemorate the Battle of Bunker Hill, June 17, 1775]

The truth is that the present government of Great Britain and the
present government of the United States of America, with their personal
liberties, both go back to a common source--the English government of
the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It is a great mistake for
us to think of Queen Elizabeth as a sovereign of a foreign country;
or of the King James version of the Scriptures as something outside
the United States; or of Shakespeare and Milton simply as “British
poets.” We Americans have the same heritage in everything that was
great and glorious in the British Isles, previous to colonization, as
those that remained upon the soil, and in many respects we have made
more improvement on those old models than our kin across the sea.
The English had to struggle for nearly a century, from 1604 to 1688,
against their kings, who wanted to turn the clock backward and take
government out of the hands of the people. At that time the Colonies
were very nearly independent little republics, who loved their English
kings in proportion as those sovereigns kept their hands off. Except
for the curse of negro slavery, which was allowed to get a firm grip on
the body politic, the Colonies down to Revolutionary times were freer,
happier and more prosperous than the mother country, and that was
the main reason for the Revolution. Why should people who were doing
so well in managing themselves continue in the leading strings of a
government that saved its democracy in England for the higher classes?

The Colonies were not little political heavens. Their ideas of liberty
did not extend to Indians, or Negroes, or Quakers. Nevertheless, in the
main, they stood stoutly for freedom of person, freedom of judicial
trial, freedom of legislative bodies; and they were about half a
century earlier than England in establishing (in the famous Zenger
case of 1734) the priceless right publicly to criticize their own
governments. John Wise, who was one of them, had a right to say that
they “hate an arbitrary power (politically considered) as they hate the
devil.”


_Hartford, the “Birthplace of American Democracy”_

The first written constitution in history that was adopted by a people
and that also organized a government, “The Fundamental Orders of
Connecticut,” was drawn up in 1639 by freemen of Windsor, Hartford
and Wethersfield. Under this law the people of Connecticut lived for
nearly two centuries. The twelve articles it comprised expressed
“pure democracy acting through representation, and imposing organic
limitations.”

“Here is the first practical assertion of the right of the people, not
only to choose, but to limit the powers of their rulers--an assertion
that lies at the foundation of the American system. It is on the banks
of the Connecticut, under the mighty preaching of Thomas Hooker, and
in the constitution to which he gave life, if not form, that we draw
the first breath of that atmosphere which is now so familiar to us. The
birthplace of American Democracy is Hartford.”

[Illustration: PAUL REVERE]

[Illustration: READING THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE FROM THE STATE
HOUSE, BOSTON]

By common consent, the period when these principles of liberty of
person and of government were first clearly impressed on the world was
in the American Revolution, which deserves to be called the cradle
of modern liberty. When things grew squally in the Colonies, our
forefathers insisted that their brand of liberty was better than the
British kind, and they began to draw up lists of rights and grievances,
especially in the Stamp Act Congress of 1765. The new states of the
American Union, as they were organized, bound themselves to observe
Bills of Rights containing such stirring principles as that, “All
power is vested in, and consequently derived from, the people.”
“All elections ought to be free, and that all men having sufficient
evidence of permanent interest with, and attached to the community,
have the right of suffrage.”--“The freedom of the press is one of the
great bulwarks of liberty.”--“All men are equally entitled to the free
exercise of religion, according to the dictates of conscience.”

By far the most renowned statement of the noble rights of liberty
was the Declaration of Independence. At the time, people were most
interested in the classified indictment of the king of Great Britain
for interfering with American liberty. The world, however, has long
agreed that the big memorable, permanent thing in that Declaration is
found in the three magnificent sentences that fulfill the injunction
of the Liberty Bell, to “proclaim liberty throughout all the land, to
all the inhabitants thereof.” Those imperishable sentences are: “We
hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal,
that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights,
that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness,--That
to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving
their just powers from the consent of the governed,--That whenever
any form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the
Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new
Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its
powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their
Safety and Happiness.”

[Illustration: ORIGINAL INDEPENDENCE HALL]

[Illustration: INDEPENDENCE HALL TODAY

Chestnut Street front]

[Illustration: THE LIBERTY BELL]

After all, anyone who can think like Franklin and write like Jefferson
could draw up a Declaration of Independence; but somebody had to fight
like Washington, in order to demonstrate that a democratic country,
resting on principles of liberty, could (with never-to-be-forgotten aid
from the French) achieve its own freedom. The lesson of liberty was
deeply learned in France, where the early French Revolution of 1789
basked in the sunshine of American freedom.

[Illustration: INTERIOR OF INDEPENDENCE HALL

Room in which Independence was born into a definite
Declaration--showing table at which Hancock placed his signature on the
historic Document]

[Illustration: From original painting by T. H. Matteson.

FIRST PRAYER IN CONGRESS--CARPENTER’S HALL, PHILADELPHIA]

Frenchmen read the Declaration of Independence, and framed a
“Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen.” They adopted for
their watchword the three words, “_Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité_,”
which are inscribed on the public buildings of the present French
Republic. Liberty--that is, personal freedom; equality--that is, equal
rights before the law; fraternity--that is, brotherhood with other
people. The French, like the Americans, made it their bottom principle
that freedom was the normal condition of men, and that everybody
was entitled to a chance to do what in him lay, provided he did not
thereby obstruct the equal privileges of his brother man. With many
hesitations, and some errors, the rising nations of the nineteenth
century strove to make real those glorious ideas. The Latin peoples
of both North and South America all professed liberty. Republics
have been set up in Switzerland, in France, in Portugal, in China,
in Russia. Virtual democracies are established in the Scandinavian
countries, Holland, Italy, Great Britain, and the great British
commonwealths of Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. Even
Germany, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria and Turkey use the forms of popular
government to conceal the real refusal of responsibility to the people
by their sovereigns.

[Illustration: ANNOUNCEMENT OF THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE to the
assembled crowd outside Independence Hall, Philadelphia, July 8, 1776]


_Constitutional Liberty_

After the Revolution came the real test of the whole principle. How
could one generation, nurtured in the cradle of liberty, pass that
blessing on to its descendants? The solution was found in a system
of state and national constitutions wherein, while standing by the
inalienable right of men to alter their government as they saw need,
checks and limitations were introduced for the protection of personal
rights. All the state constitutions, and eventually the new federal
constitution, included statements of those precious privileges. The
share in the government, so necessary for keeping alive an interest
in the welfare of the state, was extended more and more widely, till
in our time it seems likely to include all legally competent men and
women. As time has passed, new personal relations have developed;
slavery has been rooted out, the rights of labor have come to the front
and women have the vote. In time of war personal rights must yield
something to the necessities of the state, but they are the bedrock of
American Government.

[Illustration: THE BIRTHPLACE OF OLD GLORY

The Betsy Ross House, on Arch Street, Philadelphia, where the first
American flag was made]


_What Is Liberty Today?_

What is this liberty for which the statesman labors and the soldier
gives his life? How comes it that the United States of America is the
cradle of the principle, and that the success of this great republic
is the admiration of mankind? The sages and patriots of Revolutionary
times strove to explain and define it without much success. Edmund
Burke, the friend of the Colonies, found six “capital sources” from
which “a fierce spirit of liberty has grown up.” Most of these have
long ceased to operate, yet the spirit of liberty is still fierce. We
all understand that liberty means personal freedom, liberty to express
one’s thoughts in speech and press and religious observance; the right
to be tried by impartial public courts, including a jury; the right
to a government founded on the expression of the will of the people,
through votes; the right to change a government that has ceased to meet
the needs of the people; the right to education; an opportunity to test
one’s powers;--especially the right to take the voice of the many,
instead of a few, on the great questions of national life.

Liberty, however, is more than a kind of government, or a rule of
action; it is a political religion, a worship, an inspiration.
Statesmen strove to express it in terms of reverence and affection.
Thus the Continental Congress sounded its trumpet call:

“Honour, Justice, and Humanity forbid us to surrender that freedom
which we received from our ancestors, and which our posterity have a
right to receive from us.”

A great poet, Emerson, later sought to set forth this passionate
devotion to liberty: “What the tender poetic youth dreams, and prays,
and paints today, but shuns the ridicule of saying aloud, shall
presently be the resolutions of public bodies, then shall be carried
as a grievance and bill of rights through conflict and war, and then
shall be triumphant law and establishment for a hundred years, until it
gives place, in turn, to new prayers and pictures.” So all the ideals
of Liberty, like seed in the souls of mankind, take root and bear fruit
in good time.

[Illustration: FAC-SIMILE OF THE ORIGINAL RESOLUTION AS OFFERED BY MR.
RICHARD HENRY LEE

_THE INITIATION OF INDEPENDENCE._]


_SUPPLEMENTARY READING_

THE STORY OF LIBERTY, as developed in 500 years of history.
Illustrated. _By C. C. Coffin_

INDEPENDENCE DAY. A collection of prose and verse. _Edited by R. H.
Schauffler_

⁂ Information concerning the above books may be had on application to
the Editor of The Mentor.



_THE OPEN LETTER_


[Illustration: ONE OF THE LANTERNS THAT HUNG IN THE BELFRY OF OLD NORTH
CHURCH

Now in the possession of the Concord Antiquarian Society]

Man was free to begin with--as free as the beasts of the earth and the
birds of the air. Who, then enslaved humanity? Man himself. So when
Man seeks liberty, he seeks to free himself from conditions that he
has imposed on his own kind--to free himself from “Man’s inhumanity
to Man.” It is Desire--selfish Desire for conquest, possession and
control--that has enslaved mankind. The man that seeks liberty, then,
should have no place in his breast for greed and selfish desire. If,
underneath his feelings of revolt against the Tyrant and the Master,
there burns in his own soul the flame of selfish desire, how can he
condemn those that aspire to be masters of the world? How would he
himself use supreme power if it were his? Would he dominate others with
an iron hand, or would he lend his strength to the weak? When a man has
answered that question to his own satisfaction, knowing in his soul
that he has been truthful with himself, he may justly claim to be a
lover of liberty.

       *       *       *       *       *

Carlyle pictured humanity in the mass as an “Egyptian urn filled
with tamed vipers, each one struggling to raise its head above the
others.” That is a bitter expression of life’s struggle--but in the
light of history not an exaggerated one. That kind of struggle does
not make for liberty. That is a struggle for _supremacy_. Until
the desire for supremacy--for conquest and control, be checked in
the human soul, that bitter struggle will go on. Don’t mistake the
meaning of the cry for liberty. Liberty does not mean freedom from
subjection for _us_ that _we_ may master others. It means freedom for
all men--everywhere--always. The love of liberty implies the love of
humanity--the spirit of true democracy.

       *       *       *       *       *

Some years ago I heard a great leader of our people define democracy.
“We observe,” he said, “a young man of high social standing making a
companion of his washerwoman’s son, and we call him democratic. Is
he really so? Perhaps the washerwoman’s son possesses qualities that
would command the attention and respect of every one; perhaps he has
tastes in common with the young man. That is not democracy. That is
natural selection--like seeking like. It is very easy for a man to be
democratic with people he likes. But that is not democracy. _True_
democracy is that spirit in a man which makes the welfare of his fellow
men a thing vital to him, _whether he likes them or not_.”

       *       *       *       *       *

So it is with the spirit of liberty. It is all inclusive, without
taint of selfishness. It does not mean that _I_ shall be free to do
what _I_ choose. It means that _I_ consider it vital that _all_ men
shall be free and that _all_ shall enjoy life, liberty and the pursuit
of happiness, with due consideration for the rights and privileges
of every one. The spirit found expression in the words of George
Washington, when, after leading the six-year struggle of America for
liberty he was urged by his officers to assume imperial authority.
Indignantly rebuking his officers for an idea that he “viewed with
abhorrence,” he said, in effect, “Let no man ever offer that to me.”

       *       *       *       *       *

Today the United States is engaged in the greatest conflict in all
history--not for conquest and mastery, not for territory nor advantages
in commerce, not for any material gain whatever, but for the simple
cause of liberty. As a national cause, liberty was first established by
the United States. When America determined on its freedom in 1776, the
recording hand of Fate wrote on the pages of History, where the eyes
of all kings might read, “_Mene, mene, tekel, upharsin._” “You have
been tried in the balance and found wanting.” The passing years have
confirmed the judgment. The Divine Right of Kings is under sentence.
The day of reckoning is at hand.

[Illustration: W. D. Moffat

EDITOR]



THE BIRTHDAY OF INDEPENDENCE


There are many popular misconceptions concerning the incidents
attending the birth of American Liberty and the Proclamation of
Independence. Erroneous traditions gained credence in the early days,
and romanticists and poets have perpetuated them through successive
generations. It is important, therefore, to note the facts as given by
historical scholars who have made a careful study of original records,
and whose evidence may, in consequence, be relied upon.

    The Fourth of July is observed as the Birthday of Independence.
    This is the date the Document bears. The events leading up to
    the adoption of the Declaration are recounted in Monograph
    Five in this number of The Mentor. Subsequent events were
    as follows: On July fifth Congress authorized the official
    promulgation of Independence, ordering that broadsides,
    signed by John Hancock and Charles Thomson, the President and
    Secretary of Congress, be sent to the several assemblies, the
    army, and other colonial bodies, and “that it be proclaimed
    in each of the United States.” On July sixth it was ordered
    “that the Sheriff read or cause to be read and proclaimed
    at the State House, Philadelphia, on Monday, the eighth of
    July, instant at 12 o’clock noon, the Declaration of the
    Representatives of the United States of America.” July 8,
    1776, broke “a warm, sunshiny morning.” Officers, constables,
    members of committees and the people at large assembled in the
    State House Yard, and there amidst the waving of flags and the
    fluttering of banners, the Declaration was read by John Nixon
    “in a voice clear and distinct,” and greeted with loud cheers.

    This was the first time the Declaration was read in public. The
    stories of the bright-eyed boy, and immense crowds storming
    the doors of Congress on July _fourth_, and of the Declaration
    being read on that day from the steps are pronounced “pure
    inventions” by historical authorities. We have the record,
    also, that on the eighth of July, “near the hour of twelve,”
    the bell was first rung for the Proclamation of the Declaration.

    John Adams designated the second of July, on which day
    the Resolution of Independence was confirmed by the
    Representatives, as the anniversary that should, in future
    years, be celebrated by bells, fireworks and cannon. On
    July fourth the Declaration was adopted, and the document
    was authenticated by the signatures of the President and
    Secretary and all the members present, except Mr. Dickinson of
    Pennsylvania. Several days later the Declaration was engrossed
    on parchment and, on the second of August, the first signatures
    were affixed; the other signatures followed later. This is
    the Declaration that has been preserved as the original, the
    first signed paper having probably been destroyed. “If,” as
    one writer puts it, “the natal day of American Independence
    is to be derived from the ceremony of the signing, and the
    _real_ date of what has been preserved as the original of
    the Declaration, then it would be the second of August. If
    derived from the substantial, legal _act_ of separation from
    the British Crown, it would be the second of July. But common
    consent has determined the date of the great anniversary
    from the apparently subordinate event of the passage of the
    Declaration, and thus we celebrate the Fourth of July as the
    birthday of the nation.”

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THE MENTOR

WHAT HISTORY TELLS US


A century ago War had left the heart of Europe torn and bleeding.
Napoleon was ambitious to conquer the earth--a fitting parallel today
is another who wishes a place in the sun! Are you familiar with the
points of similarity in the ambitions of these two imperial disturbers
of the peace of the world? Do you know about the meteoric career of
the great Napoleon--with its equally meteoric ending? There is another
story that has a fascination that will endure forever--the story of
Jeanne d’Arc, one of the most remarkable women of all time, who at
thirteen years of age was inspired to lead the armies of France to
victory.

    But we need not go outside of the United States to find
    examples of heroism and valor that make the pages of history
    glow with interest. There were the farmers of Lexington who, in
    1775, fired “the shot heard round the world”--a shot that gave
    Americans a great country in which to enjoy life, liberty and
    the pursuit of happiness. And we cannot forget Paul Jones, who,
    when his little ship was about to sink, answered the commander
    of the great _Serapis_, who invited him to surrender, with
    the immortal words, “I have not yet begun to fight!” It is
    of special interest, in the light of present-day happenings,
    to recall such patriots as Henry Clay, who, when asked the
    question in 1812, “What are we to gain by war?” replied, “What
    are we not to lose by peace--commerce, character, a nation’s
    best treasure, honor?” There is the spirit of true patriotism
    for you!

    Get acquainted with the great men and the great deeds of the
    past, for that is the only way to understand and appreciate the
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    The Mentor History Set has been made up by such authoritative
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THESE ARE SOME OF THE SUBJECTS COVERED IN THIS GREAT HISTORY SET

  The Ruins of Rome
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  The Discoverers of North America
  The Explorers of North America
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  Fathers of the Constitution
  George Washington
  The War of 1812
  The American Triumvirate
  Benjamin Franklin
  Lafayette
  The Story of the French Revolution
  Jeanne d’Arc
  Napoleon
  Oliver Cromwell
  John Paul Jones
  The Story of the American Navy
  The Story of the American Army
  The Story of the American Railroad
  Abraham Lincoln

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