Oration on the Life and Character of General George H. Thomas. Delivered Before the Society of the Army of the Cumberland/Memorial of the Life of J. Johnston Pettigrew, Brig.-Gen. Of the Confederate States Army/in Memoriam. General Steven Elliott
By , at the Fourth Annual Reunion, Cleveland, November 25, 1870. Cincinnati : Robert Clarke & Co.
By . Charleston : John Russell.
Oration by . Columbia, S. C. : Julian A. Selby, State and City Printer.
WE group these books, not only because they have a common interest as history, but also because they are strikingly similar in Spirit, and from totally opposite feelings and convictions deal with the same great question in kindred generosity. The two memorials by Mr. Trescot are of admirable temper, that of General Pettigrew especially showing in the praise of a Southern soldier a sentiment which certainly does not seem to owe its warmth to hatred of his opponents. We have seen nothing from either side more thoroughly purged of bitterness, Mr. Trescot looks upon the solution of a question in which the logic of events, at least, has overpowered him, not without emotion, but in the light of analogous history and with philosophical self-control. His oration is a judicious tribute to the memory of a man whom (apart from his great error) we should all have found praiseworthy for noble qualities and abilities; and it is, moreover, a very instructive study of that South Carolina civilization which substituted a local for a national patriotism, and finally produced the war. We do not yet thoroughly understand this at the North, and most of us would find it difficult to make due allowance for influences we have never felt, though General Garfield does it, in his oration on Thomas, and declares that “we never shall do full justice to the conduct of Virginians in the late war ” without taking into account the fact that they, like the other Southerners, had been taught to look upon their State as their country. “Federal honors,”says Mr. Trescot, “were undervalued, and even Federal powers were underrated, except as they were reflected back from the interests and prejudices of the State..... The fathers and mothers who had reared them, the society whose traditions gave both refinement and assurance to their young ambition, the colleges in which the creed of Mr. Calhoun was the text-book of their political studies, the friends with whom they planned their future, the very land they loved, dear to them as thoughtless boys, dearer to them as thoughtful men, were all impersonate living, speaking, commanding in the State of which they were children.”
After these introductory passages upon the political and social character of South Carolina, Mr. Trescot gives a sketch of General Pettigrew’s life, philosophizing its suggestive events with a clearness and moderation which cannot be too highly commended. In fact, the perfect restraint of expression, the graceful and finished style, the eloquent yet guarded tone, make the memorial a model of its kind. Mr. Trescot is an ardent lover of South Carolina, but he is always careful to remember that “ South Carolina is a very small and not a very important part of the civilized world"; and in appreciating what he believes the virtues of her former social and political state, he has rather the air of analysis than of eulogy. As one reads his orations, so forbearing, so sensible, so discriminating, one cannot help regretting that if there are many such men as Mr. Trescot in South Carolina, we do not hear more of them. On all accounts it seems a pity, thinking of such men, that South Carolina should be the prey of Ku-Kluxes and of legislators who cannot spell.
Mr. Trescot’s memorials are studies of men who were equal to the demands of a local patriotism ; General Garfield’s eulogy presents with equal temperance and liberality the character of a man —like General Elliott and General Pettigrew, a Southerner — who rose to the conception of national duty ; and in the ampler destiny and greater fame of Thomas is reflected the superior grandeur of his ideal. We can allow all the praise that Mr. Trescot bestows upon his heroes ; we can grant that they were brave, earnest, self-devoted men ; and then we must turn with heightened admiration to the man whose country was America and not Virginia. It was to the Southerners alone that the question of allegiance to the State or to the nation was practically put, and we honor such as Thomas, while we remember in all humbleness that the mettle of no Northerner was so severely tried, whatever were our sacrifices.
General Garfield rapidly and clearly sketches Thomas’s career, and presents in all its massiveness and solidity that simple, grand, faithful life, the sublimity of which we seemed hardly to feel with due consciousness till its close. “No one knew until he was dead how strong was his hold on the hearts of the American people,” though then, indeed, “every citizen felt that a pillar of state had fallen ; that a great and true and pure man had passed from earth.”
As literature, these three orations are very creditable to the widely different civilizations that produced them, and mark a vast advance from the merely oratorical spirit in which such things were wont to be done. It is curious and interesting to find Mr. Trescot of South Carolina, and General Garfield of Ohio, both quoting Tennyson, and showing that, whatever were the varying social spheres that moulded their character, the wider and more generous influences were the same. General Garfield s oration betrays something of the carelessness of the man who must speak much and quickly ; but it is as gravely, tastefully, and honestly done as the more exquisite work of Mr.
Trescot.