H6i 



I877-I66S 



ADDRESS 



BY GEN. HORACE BINNEY SARGENT, OF SALEM, MASS. 



Mr. President^ Ladies and Gentlemen : 



Happily for this generation, the sword has been at last beaten into the 

 ploughshare and the spear into the pruning hook. But, I cannot forget that I 

 am to-day speaking before the fathers, mothers, wives and children of those 

 who, under the leadership of a family name distinguished in statesmanship and 

 army, but sixteen short years ago, gathered in that historic gallery of this very 

 Hall, and solemnly, bravely, joyfully went forth with the gallantly manned 

 and gallantly led Tenth Regiment of Massachusetts, to battle, and if need were, 

 to die for the Union. The farm houses of your beautiful valley, so full of Rev- 

 olutionary story and of Bible teaching, did not fail of inspiration in that tran- 

 scendent hour. Well did John Albion Andrew say of that grand uprising by 

 New England vale and river, "no creative art has ever woven into song a story 

 more tender in its pathos, or more stirring to the martial blood, than the scenes 

 just enacted, passing before our eyes in the villages and towns of our dear old 

 Commonwealth. Henceforth be silent ye cavillers at New England thrift, 

 economy, and peaceful toil ! Henceforth let no one dare accuse our Northern 

 sky, our icy winters, or our granite hills !" 



So, the very name of the home of the patriots at Lexington, "Cambridge 

 Farms;" the battle rolls of Concord and of Bunker Hill show as much truth as 

 poetry in the resplendent words, "The embattled farmers stood and fired the 

 shot heard "round the world." Nor does agriculture fail of the grandest exam- 

 ple. It is of a most accurate, careful, painstaking, practical agriculturist, 

 whose farm records, accounts and orders are yet a legacy of history, that Lord 

 Brougham utters these delightful words: "Uutil time shall be no more, will a 

 test of the progress which our race has made in wisdom and in virtue be de- 

 rived from the veneraticju paid to the immortal name of Washington.", 



America need not go back to Roman story for evidence that cultivators of 

 the soil were prompt to cherish and defend their native land. It was near here 

 that General Bartlett learned th^ Je&hojus that made that youthful hero the jev/- 



