… As witness this long newspaper clipping without caption inserted in somebody’s scrap-book.
‘Note that badge Major Gentian wears upon occasion. It is a military badge. It is the badge of the national brotherhood of veterans in whose Chapters the grade of the field is ignored, and the general salutes the private—comrade! Is Major Gentian’s badge this badge?’ touching a bronze button on his lapel. ‘Is it the badge of the Grand Army of the Republic? No, men and brethren, it is another sort of badge. A badge which by the original constitution of the order it symbolises was restricted to the officers of the Army of the Revolution, to them, and in primogeniture to their descendants. I remember long ago in my youth the eldest son of a revolutionary officer, and as such an inheritor of the Cincinnati badge, saying, over the Madeira, to his own son, then a stripling, “My boy, if ever there is a recognised order of nobility in this land, it will be formed of the sons of the officers of the Revolution.” What a frank letting-out was that—thanks to the old Madeira—of the spirit animating the Cincinnati in the second generation, even as in the first. And to the Cincinnati Major Gentian belongs; and he prides himself upon it; and his pride here makes him throw back his shoulders, old man though he be—yea, and lends an inch to his stature.
‘Now, gratefully and very fervently do we hold in reverence the memory of the heroes of Seventy-six. Yet who but they founded this order? Did John Hancock withstand King George’s tea-tax in the spirit of John Hampden resisting King Charles’s impost of ship-money? Yes, so; but only so. Unto John Hancock the rich merchant, no more than to John Hampden the rich country gentleman of a prior generation, had any practical purpose revealed the gospel of man’s unconditioned equality. Urge not against this aught in the Declaration of Independence. For when the passage “All men are born free and equal,” when that passage was being written were not some of the signers legalised owners of slaves?
‘Too evident is it that in throwing off the British plush, the men of Seventy-six did not shed the colonial skin. In divers respects, social and political, they remained loyal to British tradition, though justified rebels to the British crown. Assuredly no, in the characterising significance of the word as now current, they can hardly be considered Americans. It is we, their posterity, that are Americans—we, the people, the sovereign American people, who from English and European colonists have in process of time, and under the special guidance of God, developed into Americans. And in view of all this, does not Major Gentian’s Society, the Society of the Cincinnati, lag among us as much out of place as would the old Spanish Order of the Knights of the Holy Ghost.
‘I said just now that Major Gentian is vastly proud of his insignia, and I will do him the justice of admitting that this is not altogether because it is an aristocratic one, but in part because of its historic significance. But ours is a practical age. Not altogether sentimentally do we determine the relative greatness of events present and past. Into such determinations, the elements of number, man, yea, and the no less weighty element of cost, enter in. Well, then, there is Bunker Hill. A famous good fight. Yes, indeed. But how much of a muster-roll? How much of a pay-roll? Why, in Virginia we fought battles where a hundred thousand and more would be engaged. While east, west, and south, our files under arms fell not short of a million. And our war-debt, arising in no small part from generous bounties and the regular army pay-roll, soared aloft into two or three thousand millions. Then there is the pension-roll. That, too, is on a scale commensurate with the colossal magnitude of the Great Republic. Why is the blue ribbon of Major Gentian’s badge bordered with white? Major Gentian will reply, very likely, “That is in compliment to our revolutionary ally.” Indeed? But is not white the heraldic colour of the Bourbons, one of whom still preposterously advances his claim to the throne of liberated France? What a fling, then, is this white border at the tricolour of our sister the French Republic! Yes, and what a left-handed slur coming home to ourselves. Men and brethren, for aught I know, an enlightened young Englishman in superannuated old England may be at liberty to speak up for democracy; but in energetic young America, much as we respect old age, shall a hoary-headed old American be tolerated as an advocate of monarchy, or, what is equivalent to that, parading under the Stars and Stripes the craven white of the monarchical Bourbons, the beggars? And is such a man—I put it to your conscience—the sort of man to take place with the law-makers of a people, the chosen people, the advance-guard of progress, a friendly people, the Levite of the nations, to whose custody Jehovah has entrusted the sacred ark of human freedom? (Cries of “No, No,” and riotous applause.)
‘Thou laughest at this, Major, and, after laughing, pooh-poohest it: “Bless you, I divine who it was said all that. But how? Why, much as a blind musician infers who the unseen fiddler is by the twang of his fiddle. It was Colonel Bunkum—Colonel Josiah Bunkum. And, of course, he must have declaimed it at some political meeting—yes, I think I remember reading some report of it—during the canvas, when my insistent friends ran me for the legislature. Incidentally, I became acquainted with Colonel Bunkum in Virginia, now more than five-and-twenty years ago. A sunburnt whiskerando he was, whiskers bristling like a thorn hedge; valiant, indeed, but of a contorted sort of valour, quite at odds with the magnanimities and martial amenities. Ay, brave enough, you understand, but no Chevalier Bayard. Less mature, too, in mind than in muscle. Rash in opinion, very rash, headlong. Not a man of broad judicial temper, sir, nor replete with the sapient humour and wise patriarchal quality of our good old Father Abraham. You shall judge, sir. Quoting Scripture, ‘My people perish through ignorance,’ and applying it to the South, and chafing under McClellan’s Fabian tactics, he was forthwith marching from the Potomac to the Gulf with a wagon-train of Webster’s Spelling-Books, backed by another train of heavy artillery. Shot and shell and spelling-books were to be distributed broadcast and gratis, a sort of Mahommed, sir, of the Malthusian sort. Strange, how the coolest valour may go along with a hot brain-pan. Well, well, robust as ever, the colonel is now a distinguished officer in the Grand Army; and finding that I, a brother-veteran, refrain from joining it, and knowing naught of those scruples, patriotic scruples, sir, which sway me; and, unfortunately, without the intuition that might divine them, why, being more of a hero than a philosopher, it puzzles him, it irritates him—he can’t help it, it’s all natural enough—and so, dear me, for something tangible to bite at very conscientiously, doubtless he snaps at my poor little ribbon here. The good God enlighten and redeem him!”
‘That is charity, Major, Christian charity with a vengeance. But some of us ere now have thought that by such charitable construings (or, are they indolently stoical ones?) of words or actions not charitable, thy failing to take the trouble to resent them, however absurd they may be, and vindicate thyself, thou hast—and more than once or twice—been something of a loser.’