Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 07.djvu/384

376 Should the eternal seal that closes their ears be broken this day, the epithet would bring no blush to any cheek that moulders here, as it brings none to that of any true comrade who survives to defend them.

We are children of a common country whose cradle was Rebellion. Read the history of all the Commonwealths that formed the Union in the history of one. Come with me to my own capital, where Virginia has essayed to rouse the emulation of her children by erecting statues to the worthiest of those who, in the past, have made her famous. Challenge them all, face to face, with the sentry's cry, and one answer alone will come from bronze or marble—"a Rebel,"—while crowning her Pantheon sits the world's synonym for every grace and virtue that ennobles man and adorns-office—the arch-rebel of the eighteenth century—George Washington!

A hundred years and more ago, when, as Pitt said, "even the chimney-sweeps in London streets talked boastingly of their subjects in America," rebel was the uniform title of those despised subjects.

This sneer was the substitute for argument, which Camden and Chatham met in the Lords, and Burke and Barre in the Commons, as their eloquent voices were raised for justice to the Americans of the last century. "Disperse rebel" was the opening gun at Lexington. "Rebels" was the sneer of General Gage, addressed to the brave lads of Boston Common. It was the title by which Dunmore attempted to stigmatize the burgesses of Virginia, and Sir Henry Clinton passionately denounced the patriotic women of New York. At the base of every statue which gratitude has erected to patriotism in America, you will find "rebel" written. The springing shaft at Bunker Hill, the modest slab which tells where Warren fell, the monument which has given your fair city its proudest title, the fortresses which line our coast, the name of our country's capital, the very streets of our cities—all proclaim America's boundless debt to Rebels—not only to rebels who, like Hamilton and Warren, gave their first love and service to the young republic; but rebels who, like Franklin and Washington, broke their oath of allegiance to become rebels.

It was a rebellion that gave England her Great Charter, habeas corpus, her constitutional form, her parlimentaryparliamentary [sic] government. It was a rebellion which, after a hundred years of fierce unrest, has blossomed in our own day upon the soil of France into a republic,