THE MOTHERS OF THE WEST. BY W. D. GALLAGHER. THE mothers of our forest-land! Stout-hearted dames were they; With nerve to wield the battle-brand, Our rough land had no braver, In its days of blood and strife Aye ready for severest toil, The mothers of our forest-land! On old Kentucky's soil, How shared they, with each dauntless band, War's tempest and life's toil! They shrank not from the foeman— They quail'd not in the fight— But cheer'd their husbands through the day, And soothed them through the night. The mothers of our forest-land! Their bosoms pillow'd men! And proud were they by such to stand, In hammock, fort, or glen, To load the sure old rifle To run the leaden ball To watch a battling husband's place, The mothers of our forest-land ! Such were their daily deeds. Their monument !-where does it stand? Their epitaph!--who reads? No braver dames had Sparta, No nobler matrons Rome Yet who or lauds or honors them, E'en in their own green home? The mothers of our forest land! They sleep in unknown graves. And had they borne and nursed a band Of ingrates, or of slaves, They had not been more neglected! But their graves shall yet be found, And their monuments dot here and there "The Dark and Bloody Ground !" SCIENCE FRIENDLY TO FREEEOM. BY E. H. CHAPIN. No cause is so bound up with religion as the cause of political liberty and the rights of man. Unless I have read history backwards unless Magna Charta is a mistake, and the Bill of Rights a sham, and the Declaration of Independence a contumacious falsehood—unless the sages, and heroes, and martyrs, who have fought and bled, were impostorstaless the sublimest transactions in modern history, on Tower Hill, in the Parliaments of London, on the sea-tossed Mayflower-unless these are all deceitful, there is no cause so linked with religion as the cause of democratic liberty. And, sir, not only are all the moral principle, which we can summon, on the side of this great cause, but the physical movements of the age attend it and advance it. Nature is republican. The discoveries of Science are republican. Sir, what are these new forces, steam and electricity, but powers that are levelling all factitious distinctions, and forcing the world on to a noble destiny? Have they not already propelled the nineteenth century a thousand years ahead? What are they but the servitors of the people, and not of a class? Does not the poor man of to-day ride in a car dragged by forces such as never waited on kings, or drove the wheels of triumphal chariots? Does he not yoke the lightning, and touch the magnetic nerves of the world? The steam-engine is a democrat. It is the popular heart that throbs in its iron pulses. And the electric telegraph writes upon the walls of despotism, Mene mene tekel upharsin! There is a process going on in the moral and political world -like that in the physical world-crumbling the old Saurian forms of past ages, and breaking up old landmarks; and this moral process is working under Neapolitan dungeons and Austrian thrones; and, sir, it will tumble over your Metternichs and Nicholases, and convert your Josephs into fossils. I repeat it, sir, not only are all the moral principles of the age, but all the physical principles of nature, as developed by man, at work in behalf of freedom. Live, and take comfort. Thou hast left behind Powers that will work for thee; earth, air, and skies: That will forget thee; thou hast great allies; ADAMS AND LIBERTY. BY R. T. PAINE. YE sons of Columbia, who bravely have fought For those rights, which unstain'd from your sires had descended, May you long taste the blessings your valor has bought, And your sons reap the soil which their fathers defended. Mid the reign of mild Peace May your nation increase, With the glory of Rome, and the wisdom of Greece; In a clime whose rich vales feed the marts of the world, To incense the legitimate powers of the ocean. Though in thunder array'd, Let your cannon declare the free charter of trade. |