ADDRESS.

BY SENATOR THOMAS F. BAYARD, of Delaware.

My Fellow-Countrymen: I feel sensibly the honor of having been selected by the citizens of Newburgh to preside over the interesting ceremonies of to-day.

As a native of one of the thirteen States which originally formed the Union, I accept the honor of your selection in the name of Delaware, whose citizens treasure the memory of the part their ancestors bore in our united struggle for National Independence, and cherish the honest fame of their forefathers, whose fidelity and courage were well attested on the long line of battle-fields which stretches from Long Island to the Savannah River.

To-day we have here assembled from our homes in States far distant from each other, drawn together by a common impulse of the brotherhood of American citizenship; not as citizens of New York, nor of New Jersey, nor of Massachusetts, nor of Virginia, nor of Delaware; not as citizens of any State, but as citizens of the United States, to commemorate with joyful gratitude the sacrifices, the toils, sufferings, and virtues of the band of patriots whose united valor accomplished what their separate efforts could never possibly have achieved, and which have made us to-day the happy inheritors and possessors of liberty and independence under republican forms of government.

A full century has passed; and now that we find ourselves in the midst of a bountiful harvest of prosperity, possessing all the elements of wealth and power, let us gratefully cast our eyes in retrospect of the condition of things one hundred years ago on this very spot whereon we stand to-day.

That was the seed-time of American liberty and independence; this is the harvest home; and it is meet and just that we who to-day reap in joy and safety should remember those who sowed in toil and danger.

This meeting was fitly opened by the voice of reverential praise and prayer to the Almighty Ruler of the Universe, in the hollow of whose hand rests the fate of men and nations, and whose providential care is so plainly discernible in the control of the marvelous struggle which our forefathers—a scanty band-conducted to a successful termination under conditions that oftentimes seemed to forbid even hope and amid difficulties and adversities almost impossible nów to conceive.

Who can read the history of the eight eventful years of war from 1775 to 1783, even at this lapse of time, without breathless interest and agitation, mingled with wonder at the result? He who can rise from its perusal without a realizing sense, an absolute conviction, of the presence of the hand of an overruling Providence in human affairs, must indeed be strangely and abnormally constituted; and he who fails to comprehend the true value of the virtues which marked the characters of the men of that period, who were the instruments of Providence in bringing forth strength out of weakness and victory out of defeat, can know but little of the true origin of our present happy condition, of the methods by which it was attained, and the conditions under which alone we can hope to preserve it.

With minds and hearts freed from the asperities, jealousies, and misunderstandings which may have been engendered by the political differences and personal ambitions of our time, let us, forsaking all such things, return to the day whose hundredth anniversary we celebrate.

It was the day on which the Continental Congress issued its proclamation announcing the end of "a contest involving the essential rights of human nature," and invoked Divine aid "to give wisdom and unanimity to our public councils,

to cement all our citizens in the bonds of affection, and inspire them all with an earnest regard for the national honor and interest."

The Congress was then in session at Princeton, in New Jersey, whither it had withdrawn from Philadelphia by reason of the turbulence of a discontented and mutinous portion of the Army; and Washington, having suppressed the disorder, had, at the request of Congress, left the Headquarters of the Army at Newburgh, and taken up quarters at Rocky Hill, a few miles distant from Princeton.

There is a happy coincidence in the day of this proclamation, for it is also the anniversary of the victory at Yorktown, October 18, 1781, followed by the capitulation, on the 19th, of the British army under Lord Cornwallis, and the virtual end of the war; for no battle of importance was fought after that date.

When the news of the preliminary treaty of peace, which had been signed at Paris, January 20, 1783, was conveyed to this country by an armed French vessel, well named The Triumph, Congress issued a proclamation of the event, under date of April 11, 1783, and Washington promulgated from these Headquarters his memorable order for the cessation of hostilities, and recalled the fact that its date, April 19, was the anniversary of the battles of Lexington and Concord, where the first blood had been shed in the struggle for American Independence, eight years before, and which, was now crowned with complete success.

On October 18, 1783, Congress issued proclamation of the signing of the definitive treaty of peace. General Henry Knox, the brave book-seller of Boston, whose robust frame of mind and body made him so distinguished and impressive a figure in the great struggle, and whose patriotic virtues and abilities brought him so close in peace and in war to the heart and confidence of his great leader, was then in command at West Point, and by him was the action of Congress made known to the Army; congratulations were tendered upon the prospect of a permanent and honorable

peace, and thanks awarded to the Army for long, eminent, and faithful services. Its final disbandment was announced in these words:

It is our will and pleasure that such part of the Federal Ariny as stands engaged to serve during the war, and as by our acts of May 26, June 11, August 9, and September 26 last were furloughed, shall from and after November 3 next be absolutely discharged by virtue of this proclamation from said service.

And well was it that, under the wise recommendation of Washington, these recited orders for furloughs had been liberally granted, and that officers and privates had been freely allowed, ever since early spring, to go back to their homes, until but a comparatively small body remained in arms; for upon these brave men had fallen the chief stress and burden of the struggle, its sufferings and exposThe perils of war had been dreadfully aggravated by want of proper supplies, and still more by a delusive system of paper money. The miseries brought upon them by the fiction of an irredeemable paper currency were equal to all their other woes combined. Their starving families, their honorable debts, their daily needs, were all subjected to the curse of a depreciated and vitiated currency.

ures.

What man is there of you, whom if his son ask bread, will he give him a stone? Or if he ask a fish, will he give him a serpent?

Yet this was done by the Congress to the brave men who had so fought and bled to establish their country's liberties, and claimed no more than their stipulated pay, which they never received; and, despite reiterated promises and "fine words"-promises which were never kept and words which were mere breath, "mouth honor"-the Army was disbanded and melted away; not without angry remonstrances; not without serious threatenings; not, indeed, without proposed treasonable organizations, which last Washington withered with his fiery indignation and ground to powder under his feet.

Never was the weight of his personal character with the armies he led more strikingly manifested, nor its value to the country proven more importantly, than in this dangerous crisis, when the crown of unchastened power and military ambition was held out to his grasp, only to be dashed to the earth by a love of country, which never for a moment was obscured by personal interest or ambition.

If art is ever to preserve in marble or on canvas a true likeness in soul and body of this great man, the occasion of his thus putting under his feet the solicitations of unlawful ambition will surely be selected.

Yet Washington never ceased, so long as he survived, to urge the just claims of his suffering companions in arms; and his name at least is without reproach for the sins of omission in this regard, which have never been repaired, and which I fear now have become irremediable.

Standing here in the sunshine of this October day, with all the glories of earth and sky enveloping a landscape singular in its beauty, how powerfully do the local features appeal to us!

This ancient mansion, built by a Huguenot emigrant one hundred and thirty-three years ago, who sought and found in this land religious as well as civil liberty, was occupied for the year next preceding the disbandment of the Army as the Headquarters of the Commander-in-chief. And, fortunately, the arm of public preservation has been thrown around it by the State of New York, by whom it was purchased, and since 1850 it has been in the hands of trustees, to be preserved as nearly as possible in the condition in which Washington left it a hundred years ago.

Faithfully and well this trust has been administered, and the homely and simple features of the dwelling inside and out have been carefully maintained; relics of the war have been here collected, and, in pious pilgrimage, the generations of this and future days can repair hither to note with reverential interest the simple habits of the founders of the Great Republic. The mansion is in itself an impressive