THE MENTOR 1918.07.01, No. 158,
The Cradle of Liberty

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.

FANEUIL HALL, BOSTON, MASS.—“THE CRADLE OF LIBERTY”

ONE

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.

OLD NORTH CHURCH, BOSTON, MASS.—Associated with the Ride of 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.

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 LINE OF THE MINUTE MEN, LEXINGTON, MASS.

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.

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.

IN INDEPENDENCE HALL, PHILADELPHIA, PA.

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:

And underneath,

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.

FROM A PHOTOGRAPH TAKEN IN INDEPENDENCE HALL.

CHILDREN OF LIBERTY

SIX

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 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

LIBERTY ENLIGHTENING THE WORLD

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.

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.”

FANEUIL HALL IN 1789

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

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.

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.

THE BOSTON MASSACRE, MARCH 5, 1770

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

From the engraving by Paul Revere

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.

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.”

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

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.

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.”

PAUL REVERE

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.”

ORIGINAL INDEPENDENCE HALL

INDEPENDENCE HALL TODAY

Chestnut Street front

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

THE INITIATION OF INDEPENDENCE.

SUPPLEMENTARY READING

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.

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

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
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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.

THESE ARE SOME OF THE SUBJECTS COVERED
IN THIS GREAT HISTORY SET

• The Ruins of Rome
• Julius Caesar
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• The Contest for 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
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• Oliver Cromwell
• John Paul Jones
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• The Story of the American Army
• The Story of the American Railroad
• Abraham Lincoln

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