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Show 'W i;j MASSACHUSETTS " f 1 , 1 . -A i-i r 'bat h i f 'Ur 'I 7 i 3 C . X1 teegemtemaey it .r 1 '' W -'-'K i i6ioiooo. " - 'j I V---' V' ' ,A :Lm2Vk If J .. lit frWiil, i K !4 m88 KG sr m Wmmz - If ft WwTOW 1 ir- jCT'-g -J la I shall enter no encomium upon Massachusetts; 5d YJ "rrr-ST&rri11 TZj3-T i' he needs none. There she is. Behold her, and W S If JX, OT JJXiXJJfO, J-bTl Judgre for yourselves. There is her history; the tlJst.f' stretched a trenchant shadow over lakes and world knows It by heart. The past, at least, Is -'st-rZ?? VK2r' i is rt i a cv t ..cure. There is Boston and Concord and Lex- ZrP5 riVeP9 8nd P'alDS 8Dd Rockles and Sierras t0 lng:ton and Bunker Hill; and there they will re- f'Zt ttie PaciBc- I shall enter no encomium upon Massachusetts; he needs none. There she is. Behold her, and Judgre for yourselves. There is her history; the world knows It by heart. The past, at least, Is cure. There is Boston and Concord and Lexington Lex-ington and Bunker Hill; and there they will remain re-main forever. i By ELMO SCOTT WATSON IT WAS just a century ago that one of the greatest statesmen and probably THE greatest American orator uttered aaaKMa the words given above. The scene was j, m. the senate chamber in the Capitol at "P r Washington ; the orator was Daniel Webster and the occasion was the de-jR-jy? bate on a resolution of inquiry respect-ing respect-ing the sales and surveys of western 2 Iands, Introduced by Senator Foote of Connecticut in December. I89. On .Ian-nary .Ian-nary 19, 1830, Senator Hayne of South Carolina, speaking on the resolution, made an attack upon the New England states, who, he declared, wished to check the growth of the West in the interests of the protective policy. Webster felt that this attack could not be left unanswered and the next day he replied to It. But it was not until a week later, January 6, 1830, following another attack by Hayne, that he made the immortal speech, known as "Webster's Reply to Hayne," In which he not only demolished the principle of nullification but he "set forth with every attribute of eloquence the nature of the Union as It has developed under the Constitution, and took the vague popular conception and gave It life and form and character." In the course of the speech he uttered his tribute to the Old Bay state in the words which have become almost as famous as the more important part of bis oration, even though "popular conception" has erroneously preserved it in the form of "Massachusetts, there she stands I" In 1830 Daniel Webster1 pointed to the 200 years of "her history" which "the world knows by heart" And now In 1930 the people of that commonwealth com-monwealth are pointing to her 300 years of history his-tory and inviting the world to join with them in celebrating her three ' hundredth birthday. For this ig the year of the Massachusetts Bay tercentenary ter-centenary which Is being celebrated In one form or another throughout the state. Parades, pageants, pag-eants, exhibits, dedications, memorials, meetings, receptions, sports on land and water and even in the air, organized tours, official ceremonies in varied form, in addition to important business, trade and Industrial features, are some of those forms. Already some of them have been held in one place or another as a part of the general program but the principal events will take place during the five months from June to October. One of the high spots of those five months will be June 12 when a replica of an ancient ship named the Arbella will sail into Salem harbor. For it was on June 12. 1630. that the original Arbella, Ar-bella, which had sailed from Southampton. England, Eng-land, on March 22, 1G30. with 300 passengers on board, dropped her anchor In Salem harbor. Those passengers were the settlers of the Massachusetts Bay colony, chartered by King Charles I of England, Eng-land, led by John WInthrop, governor, and Thomas Dudley, lieutenant governor. If the precious charter which John Winthrop was bringing with him had been other than what It was. the Massachusetts Massa-chusetts Bay tercentenary this year would be of interest mainly to the citizens of the Bay state. But since it was what it was, that celebration has national significance. For this charter, primarily a business document similar in form to many of its-day, proved to be such a workable guide to action and government that it served as the direct basis for the constitution consti-tution of the state of Massachusetts, and this document in turn wus model for many of the later state constitutions and for that of the whole nation. More than that, upon this charter was builded the form of civil government which guarantees guar-antees to all Americans "life, liberty and pursuit of happiness" as witness the first article In the stretched a trenchant shadow over lakes and rivers and plains and Rockies and Sierras to the Pacific. Massachusetts was a full-grown colony, thumbing its nose (in a strictly constitutional manner) at the royal government in England, while New York and New Jersey and Pennsylvania Pennsyl-vania and the Carolinas were still all back settlement. Hence, Massachusetts was able to raise a crop of American statesmen before the Livingstons and the Penns and the Pinck-neys Pinck-neys and the Rutledges had begun to bloom. What a rich mouthful is the list of Massachusetts Massachu-setts men who have become part of the national na-tional history of the United States ! Bold John Smith and winning William, Bradford, and peppery, but efficient, Myles Standish ; John Winthrop and John Endlcott and Governor Gov-ernor Dudley, Parson Cotton and President Increase Mather, and the vast-minded Cotton Mather, Anne Hutchinson (the first woman In America to start a woman's club) she needed no man to tell her mind ; Ann Bradstreet, the poetess ; Jonathan Edwards, whose sermons were thought by his parishioners to be a "Hell of a preaching"; Sir William Phips, the treasure-finder; and Agnes Surriage, the treasure found ; governors and counsellors, and ensigns and military commanders all ' these stud the history of the future United States In the pre-colonial period. The American Revolution really began in the struggles of the gentlemen of the general court with the royal governors all the way along from the charter of 1093 and the string of royal governors frpm Gov. Sir William Phlps to Governor General Gage. Other colonial colo-nial legislatures expressed their minds te and at their royal governors, especially In Virginia Vir-ginia ; but the cyclone of the Revolution flrsf-blew flrsf-blew with violence in Massachusetts, and never stopped blowing until Massachusetts was a state of the Old Thirteen. Massachusetts asserts no pre-eminence in that great movement which began the political politi-cal transformation of mankind; but in the councils of the Continental congress, side by side with Jefferson of Virginia and Franklin of Pennsylvania, and PInckney of South Carolina, Caro-lina, and Livingston of New York, glitter the names of the immortal second-cousin twins, John Adams and Samuel Adams, of Hancock and Warren, of fiery old "Putt," and Manley, first commander of a national ship of war. The new Dictionary of American Biography could not do business without that couple of hundred notable number of Massachusetts names In the galaxy of the Revolution; not men only Abigail Adams and Mercy Warren and other lovely and distinguished Massachusetts Massachu-setts women. Abigail Adams had decided views as to the capacity of the female mind to comprehend politics, and as to the dramatical dra-matical question whether all men are created free and equal. Included the female part of mankind. From some of those strong-minded ladies were descended the Intrepid leaders of the woman suffrage movement, especially Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Some of the original states, prominent In the Revolutionary period, ran out of timber after the Constitutional period, but statesmen and other national leaders continued to blossom blos-som and fruit on the Massachusetts tree. Three Presidents, John Adams, John Quincy Adams and Calvin Coolidge, is a good allowance allow-ance for a state of limited area on the edge of the continent. Likewise, various speakers of the house. It Is no boast to say that from 17G1 to the present day Massachusetts has had a share in national public affairs far beyond the proportion of her population to the whole country. code of one hundred laws, called "The Body of Liberties" adopted by the Colony of Massachusetts Massachu-setts in 1641. That article reads as follows: "No mans life shall be taken away, no mans honour or good name shall be stayned, no mans person shall be arested, restrayned, banished, dismembred, nor any wayes punished, no man shall be deprived of his wife or children, no mans goods or estaite shall be taken away from him, nor any way indammaged under colour of law or Countenance of Authoritie, unlesse it be by vertue or equitie of generall Court and sufficiently published, pub-lished, or in case of the defect of a law in any particular case by the word of god. And in Capital! Capi-tal! cases or in cases concerning dismembring or banishment, according to that word to be judged by the Generall Court." In July of 1630 the Arbella was joined by six other ships bringing some 700 more colonists and in August it was decided to move the colony from Salem to Charlestown and the next month, having hav-ing found the water supply there poor they moved to the peninsula which lay to the south and west of Charlestown. There the city of Boston was founded, so another high spot In the tercentenary celebration will be "Boston Week," September 14 to 20 of this year, the seventeenth being the date for the principal celebration since it was on that date that the General Court of Wln-throp's Wln-throp's colony took the action that officially organized or-ganized Boston. Incidentally one part of the celebration cele-bration will be the dedication of a memorial on Boston Common to Winthrop and to William Blax-ton, Blax-ton, the first white settler of that historic spot. It would be impossible in the limits of this article arti-cle to list all of the events in Massachusetts history his-tory which will be recalled during the many celebrations cele-brations which make up the observance of her tercentenary this year, nor to name all of her great men who had a part In that history. If it could be done at all briefly, it is doubtful if it could be accomplished better than it has been done in the words of a distinguished historian, now a citizen of Massachusetts Prof. Albert Bushnell Hart of Harvard university. Writing an article for a Massachusetts paper, the Cambridge Tribune, early this year under the title of "Why Massachusetts?", Professor Hart summarized well the glory of the Old Bay state's record in our national annals and the interest which the tercentenary ter-centenary has for all Americans. A part of his article follows: At the start, if a person or a community has lasted to a three-hundredth birthday the presumption pre-sumption Is that something must have been done in the interval. Hence, the proposed tercentennial ter-centennial does not mean an attempt to revive re-vive the experiences of 1630. nor to content itself with a- movie of what Massachusetts is today. We are proud of our state for all the heroic deeds and grand conceptions and magnificent mag-nificent results which have studded the history his-tory of the commonwealth during three centuries. We are entitled to be proud of the physical substratum of Massachusetts, "I love thy rocks and rills. Thy woods and templed hills." The children of the soil have long been acquainted ac-quainted with the many beautiful scenes of seashore and river and plain and mountain ; and of late our neighbors, in states less scen-ically scen-ically fortunate, are rediscovering the same thing. The indented coast, with its two nip-perjaw nip-perjaw capes, is the delight of the yachtsman, yachts-man, the fisherman and the bathing person. Our hill villages are being rapidly gobbled up because of their picturesqueness of site and view, besides which Massachusetts Is a lesson m geography, since our reputed bounds once |
