P 576 
 •W945 
 
 Copy X 
 
 E HISTORY AND DEVELOPMENT OF RACES. 
 
 ANNUAL ADDRESS 
 
 IlKFORE THE 
 
 |t»tt Htf titltti %$tUi 
 
 OF WESCONSIN, 
 
 Tuesdaij Evening, Feb. 2:i, 18(i9. 
 
 BY HON. tlARLOVV S. ORTON. 
 
 MADISON, WIS.- 
 
 ATWOOD A ItUBLEE, STATE PRINTERS, .rOURNAL BLOCK. 
 
 . 1869. 
 
THE HISTORY AND DEVELOPMENT OF RACES. 
 
 ANNUAL ADDRESS 
 
 BEFORE THE 
 
 STATE HISTOmCAL SOCIETY 
 
 OF WISCONSIN, 
 
 Tuesday Evening, Feb, 23, 1869, 
 
 Y HON. HAELOW S. ORTON. 
 
 MADISON, WIS.: 
 
 ATWOOD k BUBLKE, STATE PRINTERS, JOURNAL OFFICB. 
 
 1869. 
 

 PUBLISHED BY ORDEE OF THE LEGISLATURE. 
 
 On motion of Hon. H. D. Babron, in the AssemMy, February 34th, 1869, it was 
 
 ^^Besolved by the AssemMy, the Senate concurring, That the State printer be, and he 
 hereby is directed to print 1,500 copies in pamphlet form of the annual address delivered 
 before the State Historical Society by Hon. Harlow S. Orton; 1,000 to be distributed 
 to the members of the Legislature, by the Secretary of the State Historical Society, and 
 500 for distribution by the Society." 
 
THE HISTORY AND DEVELOPMENT OF RACES. 
 
 It has been said that " History is Philosophy teaching by 
 example," and from the history of nations past and present, 
 without respect to geographical location, form of governmentj 
 or the operation of mere physical causes, certain important and 
 invariable principles, so general as to have beome inherent 
 and controlling laws in shaping and directing the current pro- 
 gress and final destiny of nations, are educed and established. 
 
 The diligent and interested explorer among the sparse and 
 doubtful materials, exhumed from the buried and forgotten 
 past, as among the superabundant and confused mass of facts 
 and events of later and remembered times, cannot but have 
 discovered the existence of these immutable principles, the 
 knowledge of which casts so much light upon the otherwise 
 dark and mysterious mazes of history. The moral, intellectual 
 and physical qualities and manifestations constitute individual 
 and personal character. These qualities and manifestations> 
 when aggregated and controlled by the domestic, social and 
 political relations, constitute the character of society and the 
 state. The first is Biography, the latter History. " It is 
 not good for man to be alone," is a Divine decree. To be 
 solitary, is to be selfish. To be exiled or imprisoned from 
 human society, is the direst punishment that can be inflicted 
 on living man. Absolute misanthropy promotes the growth of 
 all the lower and meaner propensities of the animal nature 
 and in time merges the human into the lestial^ until the wild 
 man becomes an unnatural monster, more repulsive and ter- 
 rible than a ferocious beast of prey, by reason of his superiority 
 
in intellectual sagacity and physical perfection, bereft of every 
 moral trait and amiable quality — at once the terror and the 
 aversion of the world. 
 
 Individuality becomes intensified by solitude and separation, 
 and personal identity and isolation become as distinct and 
 well defined as the forms and boundaries of atomic matter. 
 
 As in the mysterious laboratory of nature, material particles 
 are marshalled into distinct forms, affinities and relations, and 
 these harmonious combinations forming still grander and 
 greater unity, make the crowning majesty and beauty of the 
 material universe, evolving ever varying yet concordant pro- 
 gression and perpetuity, so man, individual man, in prox- 
 imity and neighborhood with his fellow men in the organized 
 structures of society and government, held by the self-imposed 
 restraints of a common political system, where "all join to 
 guard, what each desires to gain," merges his personal identity 
 and selfishness into the grander proportions of a national 
 character, contributing to fill a wider space in the successive 
 periods and the complicated yet harmonious and philosophical 
 annals of history. 
 
 Man "struts his brief hour upon the stage and then is heard 
 no more," and so with nations. They pa<s in hurried succes- 
 sion across the stage of history, perform their comedies and 
 tragedies in the world's great play, as in dramatic fiction. The 
 greatest players in the higher characters, achieve a fame, that 
 may in a few instances survive the present, and pass to the 
 memory of a future time, while the stock actors and supernu- 
 meraries, and their minor parts are forgotten. 
 
 Each succeeding tidal century, like the ocean wave, obliter- 
 ates the traces and buries up the scattered relics of the past. 
 How much of civilization and refinement, of religion and phil- 
 osophy, of arts and literature, among the nations of antiquity, 
 whose high achievements, power, greatness, and glory, made 
 the brightest epochs of ages and ages long past, have been en- 
 tirely erased from the earth, as if never existing, with not a 
 
single monument or inscription or memorial, to indicate even 
 the place or the ages of their existence. 
 
 How little to know, how much to conjecture, of the entire 
 Western Hemisphere, anterior to the time of European settle- 
 menti Who can unlock the mystic temples of the Sun, or 
 construct the magnificent architecture, decipher the cabilistic 
 letters of an unknown tongue, now scattered in rich fragments 
 and confused rains over the plains of Mexico and Peru ? Lono- 
 ages of barbarism, successive races of people, whose origin and 
 history are doubtfully preserved in wild and incredible tradi- 
 dition, have long since destroyed nearly every trace of Ameri- 
 can antiquities. Geologically it is the oldest division of the solid 
 earth, but hisiorically it is indeed but the New World, and its 
 discovery has only consisted of so much geographical surface, 
 m possession of a wandering and irresponsible race of sava- 
 ges, but httle above the wild beasts, among which they roam 
 and upon which they prey and subsist. ' 
 
 Even in the East, the place that conjecture has assigned as 
 the cradle and infancy of the human race, the period of credi- 
 ble history, is circumscribed by the horizon of a few centuries 
 with only just enough of historical mention by the oldest 
 ehroniclers, and just enough of the broken arches and crum- • 
 bling wails and faded hieroglyphics, scattered here and there 
 over the surface, where their mighty cities lie buried, to excite 
 the curiosity and wonder of modern times. The ardent and 
 devoted antiquary of our age, will endure the perils of sea 
 and land, hunger, thirst, sickness and death, in defiance of hos- 
 tile climates, and savage tribes of people, to explore the sepul- 
 chres and ruined cities, the pillars and pyramids, the bro- 
 ken columns and capitals, the symbolical characters and the 
 defaced yet enduring sculpture of nations, whose name and 
 glory only yet linajer on the fast fading confines of history, 
 If possible to throw some feeble rays of light into the impen- 
 etrable darkness of the pas The waters of the Ganges, the 
 Euphrates, the Nile, the Adriati<j, and the Mediterranean, have 
 
long since swallowed up and swept away nearly the last ves- 
 tio-es of mighty nations, whose wide-spread commerce they once 
 floated to interchanging markets, and whose shores were once 
 rich in agriculture and husbandry, and the highest achieve- 
 ments of art and architecture. Even the age and duration of the 
 earth, and the length of time it has been peopled by our race^ 
 are problems that must forever remain unsolved, and the for- 
 merly accepted chronologies and genealogies, are now reason- 
 ably questioned by the ethnological discoveries and discus- 
 sions of our time. The world is not known to have had any 
 historian until Moses, and it is to be presumed that the his- 
 tory of his own peculiar people, then long in bondage to the 
 Egyptians, had to be gathered from the scattered, questionable, 
 contradictory, vague, indistinct and marvelous traditions and 
 fables, handed down from early and romantic times by family 
 recital and narrative, and we find the same or a similar account 
 of the creation, the origin, transgression and dispersion of our 
 race, and the general deluge, in the mythology of nearly all 
 the nations of antiquity. I know of no reason why his ac- 
 count of times long anterior to his own age, resting in mere 
 tradition, should be more reliable than the conceded fabulous 
 legends of Homer or Hesiod, of Strabo or Herodotus. 
 There is no known portion of the globe that does not bear the 
 indelible foot-prints of our race, and vestiges of his occupancy 
 and habitation, and often in greater numbers and of a much 
 higher type of civilization, than at present, without respect to 
 latitude or climate. The crust of the entire earth is mingled 
 and assimilated with the dissolved and disorganized remains 
 of the billions and billions of human bodies, once clothed in 
 habiliments of life, energy and action, and invested with mys- 
 terious capabilties of the immortal soul ; playing their several 
 parts in the great dramas of history, and leaving no records or 
 mementos of their lives deeds or nationalities, and no monu- 
 ments of their deaths or burials. In ages long ago, even an- 
 terior to our traditional history, our race may have had a com-- 
 
mon type, and a common language, and may have attained the 
 highest perfection in the science of government, in moral and 
 social purity and enjoyment, in learning, literature, philosophy 
 and art, and the highest point of national greatness and 
 aggrandizment, and yet all trace of such a condition be now lost 
 forever. It is not at all improbable — no more improbable, than 
 the known fact that many of the highest of the useful arts 
 and discoveries in science, of which the evidence only remains, 
 in the imperishable monuments they have reared, to mock 
 and tantalize the greatest efforts of modern genius and dis- 
 covery, can never he restored. 
 
 Every year the researches of the antiquarian philosopher 
 are rewarded by the discovery of buried cities, sculptured tab- 
 lets, and the relics of wealth and magnificence, and the or- 
 naments and utensils of common life, with which is- still pre- 
 served the alphabet of a lost language, affording indisputable 
 evidence of the rise, prosperity and greatness, the gradual de- 
 cadence and final fall and extermination of the most polished,, 
 cultivated and powerful nations, whose names and existence,, 
 and every incident of their history, have perished from the 
 memory of our race for thirty or forty centuries. We have 
 only recently discovered, by violating the sanctity of the sep- 
 ulchre, that along the classic Tiber, and over the far-famed and 
 beautiful plains, and vine-clad hills of Tuscany, where mighty 
 Rome had the seat of her power, and achieved her highest great- 
 ness and glory; the empire whose early history is already un- 
 known, and traced by even her own historians, who wrote her 
 annals centuries ago, into the mystic and obscure fables of her 
 mythology — there once ruled and reigned the mighty nation of 
 Umbrians, who built magnificent cities, had an unrivalled com- 
 merce, were greatly distinguished in architecture, sculpture and 
 painting, in science, literature and law, centuries and centuries 
 before Romulus and Remus were suckled by the fabled wolf, 
 or Theseus was miraculously conceived by the virgin daugh- 
 ter of PytheuSj in answer to the responsive oracle of Delphi. 
 
Even ancient Eome was built upon the ruins, and her mighty 
 nations learned their arts among the tombs of the still more an- 
 cient Etruscans. Over the whole of Tuscany and along the 
 northern banks of the Tiber, magnificent Etruscan cities once 
 stood of the highest architectural splendor, whose unrivalled 
 trade, commerce and agriculture gave employment to one of 
 the most highly civilized, the most intelligent and cultivated, 
 and most populous nations of the Old World. The remains of 
 their proud walls, their well paved roads, their admirable sys- 
 tems of drainage and tunneling, and of their decorative art, 
 bear abundant testimony of Lheir ancient glory ; and their se- 
 pulchres, with which almost every range of her cliffs were lined, 
 and her millions of tombs, now hidden beneath the soil, still 
 bear record that here one of the most populous of nations lived 
 and died. Their manners and national customs, modes of life 
 and religious observances, their artistic development, and al- 
 most their intellectual ideas can be known by their ruins and 
 relics ; far more, in this way at any rate, than by the meagre 
 and fragmentary records met with in the Greek and Eoman 
 writers of antiquity. Not even the Greeks or the Eomans, 
 with all their boasted learning, had any knowledge whatever 
 of their language, which now exists only in its alphabet, found 
 in one of the Etruscan tombs. 
 
 How exceedingly little can we know of the past history of 
 our race, even in the stages of its highest development ! How 
 few the relics, and scanty the details, of their national and indi- 
 vidual life to tantalize the most searching inquiries into the 
 history of the world ! How long, through what unnumbered 
 ages man has lived, in changing governments and ever shifting 
 forms of social affinities, and achieved grandeur and glory, 
 long before the period of historical conjecture, that pales and 
 dwindles the mightiest prodigies, and the supposed unrivaled 
 progress of our own boasted times, whose short historical an- 
 nals are already lost in the rude antiquities of a few hundred 
 years ago ! 
 
 Around the beautiful and indented bays and over the classic 
 
9 
 
 islands, that join the waters of the Mediterranean and the 
 Tuscan seas, along the bold cliffs of the Adriatic, the Ionian and 
 -^gian, the Phoenician and the Chaldean and other unknown 
 nations founded their mighty empires, that flourished through 
 long ages of time, coeval with the earliest traditional history 
 of the Israelites. Who can trace these mighty, populous and 
 cultivated nations to their primeval source ? Who built the 
 vast and wonderful cities of Tyre and Sidon, of Memphis and 
 Persepolis? Where was the cradle of their arts, and where 
 the first discoveries of their science and philosophy? Who 
 were the Tyrhenians, the Lygurians, the Pelasgians, the Do- 
 rians the Acheans, the Phocians and the numberless nations 
 and tribes celebrated in history ? Whence came the various 
 systems of philosophy and religion, the mystic rites and re- 
 nowned oracles, that made famous the sacred groves, and the 
 holy mountains of Parnassus, Olympus, Ossa, Pelion and (E ta ? 
 Where did Thales and Pythagoras obtain their learning and 
 philosophy, and where did the blind Homer catch the inspira- 
 tions and write his immortal epic? Even in those distant 
 ages their own history and origin were so wholly lost that the 
 most credible of their historians are compelled to trace their 
 lineage to the very gods, and attribute the birth of their an. 
 cestors to miracle. One thing is certain, the Greeks made 
 slaves of people once of far greater national renown than 
 their own, and the early Komans improved their blood by 
 forced intermarriage with the Sabines, and both nations were 
 too proud and haughty to preserve the history of the nations 
 whence they sprung, and amid the ruins of whose mighty cit- 
 ies they sought to reconstruct from the relics of former ages, a 
 civilization that would eclipse, but in fact failed to even rival 
 their great and splendid originals. 
 
 Without pursuing further, at this time, this theme, so 
 unpleasant and unsatisfactory to the student of history, by 
 reason of the perished records and uncertain data, to guide 
 him in his researches, but furnishing abundant evidence of 
 
10 
 
 a much longer existence of tlie human race than we have 
 • any adequate conception or credible history, either sacred 
 or profane, I will notice for a short time, two most remark- 
 able characteristics, that stand out prominently in the known 
 as well as unknown history of our race — I mean its types 
 and languages. A consideration of these most important 
 particulars opens a wide and inviting field of research and m- 
 vestio'ation to the ethnologist and antiquarian philosf)pher — 
 a vast and comprehensive subject, on which volumes have 
 been written, and may still be written, which I have barely time 
 to notice here, and only to illustrate the view already taken, and 
 if possible, to disclose two main principles of historical philo- 
 sophy that have given direction to the courses and currents of 
 the history of the past 
 
 As long ago, as we have any knowledge of mankind, they 
 have been divided into distinct and well defined physical 
 types and races ; and if we accept the theory, that they had a 
 common origin, which I do not doubt, it is most certain, that 
 these types and peculiarities have not been formed during the 
 long period of which we have any historical account. 
 
 It must have required long ages, we know not how long, by 
 being confined to a particular country and latitude, by unin- 
 terupted non-intercourse, without any infusion of foreign blood, 
 by a perfect homogeneousness, by a long continued and un- 
 broken line of genealogical affinity, to beget the characteristics 
 of consangunity and family kindred, and to establish a fixed 
 and permanent type, and distinct race of men. 
 
 Take the Ethiopean, inhabiting the central and western por- 
 tions of Africa, south of the Great Desert, how marked his 
 peculiarity in color, form and feature, so familiar to us, that 
 we need not go far to study his ethnological relations to the 
 human race. Yes, he is a man and a brother, but what a 
 lapse of time must have pwept over his jungle home in 
 Africa, whose heated and unhealthy climate and tropical lati- 
 tude have protected him fromi foreign intermixture, to have 
 
11 
 
 made him so physically dissimilar, in all ages and times, of 
 which we have any knowledge, and the non-resisting victim 
 of rapacity and oppression, to his more perfectly formed, more 
 vigorous, yet, perhaps, more wicked brother. 
 
 The oldest historians throw no light upon his dark and un- 
 known origin, and we know he has not changed in any respect, 
 for long ages before the Carthaginian invasion of Africa. A 
 perfect delineation of his form and features, and his condition 
 of slavery, is found to have been rudely but correctly pictured 
 on Egyptian, Chaldean and Etruscan monuments, over three 
 thouslnd years ago. He must, some time, have borne the 
 common type of our race in color and conformation. 
 
 That he' now bears his own well marked and peculiar type, 
 so different from any other division of the human race, may 
 well account for his deterioration in the human scale, for we 
 will find that every nation, in ancient or modern times, which 
 has been kept exclusive enough, and long enough in one geo- 
 graphical locality, and without foreign intermixture, to assume 
 a peculiar type or resemblance, has in just the proportion their 
 physical peculiarities become fixed and remarkable, fallen 
 into human inferiority, and accomplished but little, if 
 anything, of national progress and advancement. 
 
 The history of the world, dubious and fragmentary as it is, 
 illustrates this general law of our being, positive and unexcep- 
 tional :— that the highest developement of our species, the cul- 
 ture of its faculties, and the dominion of its powers over the 
 kingdoms of nature, are achieved only by the commingling in 
 civi^l society of apparently diverse, remote, antagonistic nation- 
 al characteristics, but not by forming a too great homogenious- 
 ness or common type. Like the intermarriage of family kin- 
 dred, it deteriorates the race, and this is the only way a na- 
 tional type is begotten. It is family relationship on a large 
 and national scale, so long kept from intermixture as to estab- 
 lish an unquestionable consanguinity. 
 
 The Mongolian type or race has nearly as distinct and well- 
 
12 
 
 marked characteristics as the African. We find him unmixed 
 in the north of Asia, the wild and wandering Tartar, with his 
 copper colored skin, his black, coarse hair, long forehead, small 
 black eyes sunk deeply into his head, broad face, high cheek 
 bones, arched legs, large feet, but small hands. Wherever we 
 find him, he is the same, in any part of Asia, mixed with the 
 Chinese, the Turks, the Arabs or the Hindoos, still the Tartar. 
 
 There has been much written and much labored argument 
 to prove that the Indian of North America differs from the 
 Indian of South and Central America, and that both must 
 have come from Southern Asia, or even that they are the de- 
 scendants of the lost tribes of Israel. Their type is unques- 
 tionably the the pure type of the Tartar, and they are all alike, 
 from the Esquimaux, with his body shortened by the bleak 
 and almost perpetual winter of the North, to the gigantic pro- 
 portions of the Patagonian, in the region of Cape Horn, all 
 alike with every peculiarity of the Tartar, only differing in 
 social customs adapted to the peculiar climates and countries 
 they inhabit. They are nomadic and tribal, and their govern- 
 ment patriarchal, and they submit to the chief or sheik ; use 
 similar weapons, the spear, bow and arrow and war club, — the 
 Tartar transferred across the forty miles of Behring's Strait, 
 from the tents and herds in the vast plains of Tartary, to the 
 dense forests, wild game, and wigwams of North America. 
 When Ivan, of Eussia, conquered the wild tribes of the Tar- 
 tars in Sil>eria, in the 15th century, the}^ were found there of 
 precisely the same habits of the North American Indian, and 
 lived by the chase in the wilderness, and constantly at war with 
 each other. 
 
 But these Tartar Indians are by no means even the kindred 
 or descendants ol those exterminated and lost races, that away 
 back in remote ages built and left the vast cities and fortifica- 
 tions and sculptured monuments, bearing inscriptions in a lost 
 language, now feebly traced in the scattered ruins overgrown 
 by the mighty forests of the Western Continent. 
 
13 
 
 In Biblical history, we learn much on this question in the 
 history of the Israelites. The Jews were a peculiar people 
 and by their government and laws were prohibited from in- 
 tercourse and intermarriage with other nations, and neither at 
 home nor abroad, by invasion or captivity, was their pure lin- 
 eage and unmixed blood ever corrupted. And yet in all the 
 six thousand years of Bible chronology, we have no reason to 
 doubt they have borne a peculiar type, and were distinguished 
 by it among the nations of remote antiquity, as much as they 
 are still among all the nations, and in the foreign and remote 
 countries, through which they have been scattered and dis- 
 persed — and until their dispersion as a nation, they certainly 
 accomplished but little in comparison with the great and his- 
 torical nations of the East. 
 
 It required tb^e repeated interposition of Heaven, by revela- 
 tion, miracles and prophecy throughout their recorded history 
 to prevent them from lapsing into barbarism and idolatry, ef- 
 feminacy and slavery. They have left no monuments to record 
 and perpetuate their civilization, their arts or their learning. 
 Their one magnificent city and the central capital of their 
 power, still stands a mournful ruin, without the sacred temple 
 of their religion, around which it was built, and their beautiful 
 land of the palm, the fig and the vine, with all the holy places 
 of the old and new religions, is in possession of the wild, dis- 
 solute and feeble Tartars, Turks and Arabs, who live by pil- 
 lage, robbery and plunder. Since the dispersion of the Jews, 
 they have of course borne a prominent part in making the his- 
 tory of almost all the modern nations. 
 
 I have nothmg to say against the Jews as a people, or their 
 religion. They have always manifested among all nations, 
 and especially in our own, signal patriotism, great enterprise, 
 and the very highest qualities, intellectual, moral, social, do- 
 mestic and political, but their exclusiveness in marriage is, in 
 my opinion, a violation of the natural law, and hostile to indi- 
 vidual and natural progress and elevation, and will most cer- ■ 
 
14 
 
 tainly make more and more prominent and indelible the pecu- 
 liarities of the Jewish type and race as time rolls on. I men- 
 tion this type, with others more or less prominent in other na- 
 tions, to illustrate that great principle of historical philosophy 
 which I have mentioned. 
 
 The Malay type, illustrated by the^ Chinese, the Japanese, 
 and the Hindoo, is not so remarkable as that of African and 
 Mongolian,' and for the only reason that so long a time has not 
 elapsed since they have been exclusive and homogeneous ; and 
 by the invasion of stronger nations, they have from time to 
 time become intermixed and improved. When the wandering 
 and conquering tribes of northern and central Asia first coa- 
 lesced and crystalised into nations, for a few centuries, they 
 were vigorous and enterprising and made astonishing progress 
 in arts and learning, and produced great statesmen, military 
 heroes, and a splendid line of kings — and were distinguished 
 for philosophers and teachers of religion, science and ethics; 
 and the immortal Confucius stands high in bold relief above 
 the dismal vista of their intervening history to rival Socrates 
 and Plato. They constructed mighty internal improvements, 
 long canals, and the great walL But when they became 
 nationally exclusive and shut out from intercourse with other 
 nations, they began to assume their peculiar type of race — 
 maintaining a nationality, and having a continuous and written 
 history it is true, and making, perhaps, some progress in politi- 
 cal science, but retrogading in every thing else. What a his- 
 tory, or rather what a blank in history, is here presented ! 
 How dull and monotonous ! How barren of incidents and 
 events ! How lifeless, stagnant and improgressive ! A vast 
 plane without a mountain or a valley — without a monument 
 or a landmark. No improvement in language or literature, 
 modes of agriculture or mechanical arts — still reading the 
 books and practicing the arts of antiquity, without the genius 
 to invent, or energy to execute, any thing new, or give any evi- 
 
15 
 
 dence of progress. And their improvements of antiquity are 
 goin to ruin and decay. 
 
 Old Spain, of all modern nations, affords us the most com- 
 plete and suggestive illustration of the present subject of our 
 discussion. 
 
 In the 8th century, the time of the Moorish invasion, the peo - 
 pie of that accessible and unguarded peninsula, were the freest, 
 most prosperous, and most cultivated in Europe. They had 
 rescued and preserved the best civil laws and institutions, and 
 the matured fruits of the learning and culture, of Republican 
 and Imperial Rome, which had then fallen into ruins, and been 
 parceled out among her barbarian conquerors. Civilization 
 and refinement seemed to have left the historic hills crowned 
 with the magnificent but fast-decaying temples of an extin- 
 guished nationality, and to have nestled for a time, in the rich 
 and beautiful valleys of the Pyrenees and Andalusia. The 
 Moorish invasion only seemed to exhilerate and energise the 
 elements of their growth and development, and impel them 
 onward in that career of civic and martial grandeur and glory 
 that afterwards for centuries made all the Christian and Sara- 
 cenic world of Europe and Asia look with wonder and admira- 
 tion upon their deeds of arms, gallantry and magnanimity; and 
 here was the first beginning of the age of Chivalry, and finally 
 Spain culminated, when Ferdinand and Isabella drove the 
 Moor from the Alhambra, 'collected the grand divisions of Leon, 
 Castile, Arragon, Andalusia and Granada into a consolidated 
 monarchy, and sent Columbus away to the West, to discover 
 America. Who were these people ? Who was the proud and 
 polished Spaniard ? Who the high-toned and haughty Castil- 
 ian, that boasted his pure lineage and unmixed blood ? Yes, 
 who was he, but the descendant of the Carthaginian and the 
 Roman, the Celtic Iberian and the Yisgoth, with complexion 
 bronzed, and eye darkened by slight intermixture with the 
 Mahomedan Tartar ? 
 
 Hallam says, "nothing can be more obscure than 
 
16 
 
 tlie beginnings of those little states, whicTi were formed in 
 Navarre, and the country of Soprarbe. On both sides of the 
 Pyrenees dwelt an aboriginal people, the last to undergo the 
 yoke, and who had never acquired the language of Rome. 
 We know little of these intrepid mountaineers, in the dark 
 period which elapsed under the Grothic and Frank dynasties, 
 till we find them cutting off the rear guard of Charlemagne, 
 and maintaining their independence against the Saracens." 
 For a hundred years after the discovery of the Western Con- 
 tinent, Spain had consolidated and become a homogeneous 
 people. She reaped the first harvests of her discoveries in the 
 New World, and became the richest and the strongest power 
 in Europe. She was now a parent country, and sent out her 
 colonies to distant lands. She began to assume the Spanish 
 type, and the Spaniard could be known the world over, by 
 his physical peculiarity. She had virtually discovered, and 
 was the first to plant, her colonies on the shores of South and 
 Central America. She had reached the acme of her national 
 glory. She passed on to the declining and decaying age of 
 nations. She had arrived at her maturity, and peopled dis- 
 tant lands with her children, she must now fast sink down to 
 the inevitable grave of nations. She dashed her so-called in- 
 vincible armada upon the iron shores of England, as her last 
 bold, desperate, but expiring struggle, and has since lain de- 
 crepit, supine and feeble with age, \he sport and jeer of na- 
 tions, mumbling, in bigotry and superstition, and gnashing 
 her toothless gums in harmless persecution, and now "the 
 most revolting picture in the book of time," the splendid his- 
 toric name of Isabella is borne by the bleared, blotched, 
 corrupted, and incestuous remnant of the last of Spanish queens, 
 a despised and accursed fugitive from her throne, and her 
 kingdom given up to faction. 
 
 All agree that this sad spectacle of national decline, is at- 
 tributable to that intense homogeneousness, which results from 
 a general consanguinity, interbred persistently from generation 
 
17 
 
 to generation from the Hidalgo to the peasant, instigated by 
 the proud jealousy of maintaining the pure currents of Cas- 
 tilian blood from the supposed taint of foreign intermixture. 
 
 The obvious lesson to be learned from this glance at Spanish 
 history, is the one indicated by our subject, viz : That so 
 long as a nation is receiving the rich infusion of foreign and 
 colonial blood, assimilating it by the rejuvinating energies of 
 its national life, it achieves its highest development and des- 
 tiny ; and when it ceases to receive these life-giving currents, 
 and is shut up to an unnatural intermarriage and proud or sel- 
 fish exclusiveness to itself alone, until the beggar has royal 
 blood, and the prince is cousin to the beggar, it falls into neces- 
 sary decline. 
 
 Not only is it necessary and mdispensible to a high con- 
 dition of national prosperity and success, that apparently 
 foreign and remote sources should contribute to the reservoir 
 of national life and character, but that these sources should be 
 at least as high as, if not higher than, the place where they dis- 
 charge their generous currents. If all the divisions of our 
 race were equal, physically and intellectually, then the inter- 
 change would injure none, and improve all alike. But we 
 have seen that this is not now the condition of the human race. 
 Many grand divisions of it have dwindled by the violation of 
 this great natural law of life, into the lowest possible types and 
 forms of humanity by long- centuries of homogeneous exclusive- 
 ness, and it will take many centuries of wisely adapted and 
 philosophical means of intercommunication and admixture 
 to obliterate the type, and elevate these races to their pristine 
 and original God-given image. It is not easy to repair and 
 restore that which has been lost by long ages of transgression 
 of so high and imperative a law as that which was ordained 
 when God made of one blood all nations of the earth. 
 
 If history teaches us anything upon this subject it is the 
 same lesson we learn from an observation of nature's invariable 
 2 
 
. 18 
 
 law, that an engrafting upon the healthy and vigorous stock 
 of nations of scions of meaner growth and of lower type, will 
 degrade the higher far more than it will improve the lower. 
 Indeed it is very questionable whether the lower will be im- 
 proved at all. 
 
 Old Spain has tried the experiment — her Castilian blood 
 has been freely mingled again with the type of the Tartar, 
 lower than the Moor of Granada, or the Indian races of Mexico, 
 Central and South America. The result is, a mixed or mestizo 
 race, lower and more degraded by far than the native Indian, 
 without the remotest prospect of the production of a higher 
 type. She has thus entailed a blighting curse upon the fairest 
 and richest portions of that New World she first discovered and 
 colonized, and now presents to the world the two fold and 
 monstrous national distortion of having acquired an indelible 
 type by consanguity at home, and degraded even that type by 
 an unwise and unnatural intermixure abroad. " Ye cannot 
 gather grapes from thorns nor figs from thistles." 
 
 What we call the Caucasian race, is no type ; it is the 
 original, the primeval race, the most perfect form of physical 
 beauty, symmetry and proportion — the crowning work of 
 the creation, and the worthy cabinet of the Divinity that stirs 
 within it. 
 
 Throughout the long ages that have elapsed since the crea- 
 tion, it has guarded itself from retrogression in all the muta- 
 tions of history, and the rise and fall of nations, by that grand 
 law of intermixture with the strong and vigorous elements of 
 ; national life, always kept and preserved somewhere on the 
 ■ earth, suf&ciently remote and progressive to keep far apart by 
 time and space the fountains of kindred blood, which by its 
 own inherent power and energy, marches and counter marches, 
 again and again, into commingling currents, elaborating the 
 perpetual similitude, yet nicely formed variety, of the perfect 
 human race, that in all ages has achieved all there is in his- 
 ;tory, all there is in human advancement and culture, all there 
 
19 
 
 is in the wonderful productions of intellect and genius, all there 
 is or ever has been of art, science, literature, law or religion. 
 
 This r^ce has always held, and always will hold, the favored 
 places of the globe, in latitude and land, in climate and pro- 
 ductions best adapted to itself, for it holds the earth in com- 
 mand and has the intelligence to choose, and the will and power 
 to possess, and hold long enough to work out the great prob- 
 lems of national progression and destiny. 
 
 This race, our race, is restless, moving, colonizing, exploring, 
 discerning, warlike, conquering, improving, progressive. 
 
 They coa,lesce into nations naturally, and by force of the 
 inherent affinities of genius and taste, energy and enterprise, 
 ethical philosophy and religion, and rise to the ever higher 
 and higher consummation of national wealth, civilization 
 refinement and grandeur. They construct the most perfect 
 and the freest of civil governments, and retain them unchanged, 
 in the cardinal and underlying principles of their organic struc- 
 ture until they arrive at the highest national maturity, become 
 crowded for space in which to exert the full measure of their 
 energies and enterprise — explore, and if need be, conquer dis- 
 tant lands held by feeble races, send out their swarmmg 
 colonies, and again and again repeat, only varied by improve- 
 ment and progress, their own great historic parallels of the 
 past. 
 
 All the greatness and glory of antiquity, reflected in the still 
 splendid and mighty ruins and monuments scattered in their 
 yet unobscured national pathway, belonged exclusively to our 
 Caucasian race ; and all the strong, and all the free govern_ 
 ments, all the achievements of art and enterprise, of science 
 literature and religion that engross and fill up the pages of 
 modern history, and make the present age the most splendid 
 and glorious in the grand cycles of revolving time, and crown 
 with beatitude the ethnological obedience to the imperative 
 laws of national life and development, are Caucasian. Our own 
 people, here in this new and favored field of national experi- 
 
20 
 
 ment, apparently of diverse origin and nationality, who have 
 accomplished so much within a single century as to have be- 
 come the wonder of the world, and who represent, in my opinion, 
 the very highest and most perfect development of our race, 
 have no obscure or doubtful genealogical derivation ; and the- 
 most interesting part of my subject would be, if time would 
 permit, to trace the well defined yet meandering currents of 
 our national blood away back, and upward amid the storm- 
 clouds and mountain altitudes of antiquity, to their dim and 
 misty sources. If there was not a single scrap of written 
 history to give us a clue to our origin, or guide us on our way, 
 the for 11 and structure of language, systems of philosophy and 
 religion, household words, songs, nursery tales, traditional man- 
 ners and customs, civil institutions and policies, mental proces- 
 ses and methods of thought, and physical conformation and 
 complexion, would furnish to the philosophical historian, the 
 amplest and most infallible data in his pleasing and instruct- 
 ive exploration into the past history of our own race. Here 
 we enter upon an almost limitless field of inquiry, with such 
 a profusion of material that only a mere glance at the subject 
 can be taken on this occasion. This address is not intended so 
 much to give instruction, as to be suggestive merelyof the sub- 
 jects noticed, and to incite reading and inquiry, and indicate 
 subjects of thought and reflection, vastly important practically, 
 as well as a curious ethnological investigation for our time. 
 Nearly all of the original and radical words of the modern lan- 
 guages of Europe are replete with history, and by late philo- 
 logical investigations are found to be cognate. If the neologic- 
 al additions to these languages, made since the 10th century 
 were taken away, they would besubstantially the same Ian 
 guages with different dialects only, and these dialects no more 
 distinctive than those of ancient Greece or modern England, 
 In the absence of all credible history as to the origin or con- 
 dition, geographical location or migration of the tribes and 
 peoples from which we derive our own extraction, before the 
 
21 
 
 10th century, we are left to the analogies of languages main- 
 ly, and to these other general similarities incidentally, to deter- 
 mine our national affinities and derivation. The Roman writ- 
 ers since C^SAR and Tacitus did not trouble themselves about 
 those mysterious Gselic and Grothic tribes swarming in the 
 North any further than to abuse and traduce them as vandals 
 and barbarians, and even C^sar and Tacitus give us no ac- 
 count or conjecture of their origin. It is surprising to us, that 
 in an age so learned and cultivated, so abounding with histor- 
 ians and philosophers, that neither Greece nor Rome ever made 
 the least intelligent inquiry into the origin of races or their 
 geographical or historical relationship, and that they should 
 have left the origin of their own boasted nationalities shrouded 
 in the darkness of fable and mythology. 
 
 It may be that books were written upon this and kindred 
 subjects, by the ancients, which have been destroyed, for the 
 Christian world is compelled to confess, that in the early and 
 superstitious age of the church, through a bigotry- worse than 
 vandalism, the books and writings of the Roman and Grecian 
 authors, were frequently and indiscriminately destroyed as pro- 
 fane; and that any have been saved is attributable to the fact 
 that some monkish lover of letters valued ancient learning and 
 literature higher than Christian creeds, and the learned and 
 philosophical writers of Pagan times, than the coarse and ig- 
 norant fathers of the church. 
 
 In attempting to trace the history of our race by its language, 
 it cannot be expected in this short compass that the thousands 
 of original words that are radically the same in all the nations 
 which sprung from the same source can be mentioned, and for 
 the present purpose it is unnecessary. In remote times the 
 Phoenicians were the most celebrated people on earth. They 
 built splendid cities, were great navigators, had an extended 
 trade and commerce and an alphabetical language. At what 
 period of the world's history they became the leading people of 
 the earth in letters, arts and architecture, in trade, commerce 
 
22 
 
 and navigation it is impossible to know, but it must have been 
 long anterior to the gathering together of the Grecian states. 
 The Greeks were unquestionably their descendants, preserved 
 their language and systems of religion, and maintained, in mod- 
 ified forms, their principles of civil government. 
 
 Neptune with his trident was a Phoenician god, sure evi- 
 dence that they were emphatically the navigators and discov- 
 erers of the ancient world. 
 
 They emanated from the country lying south-east of the 
 Euxine sea, and on the head waters of the Euphrates and along 
 the base of the Caucasian mountains, a salubrious climate, and 
 a rough but productive country. The name given to that re- 
 gion by the most ancient mention of it in history, is significant, 
 "Iberus." In the first exploration of the Spanish peninsula 
 by the Greeks and Eomans, a river was found called by the 
 native inhabitants " Iberus," afterwards " Celtiberus," It is 
 remarkable that all the tribes of people found outside the do- 
 minions of Greece, Eome, Persia and Egypt, whose origin at 
 that time was unknown, were called Gallicse or Gauls, Celtica^ 
 or Celts, and Scythians, and these names are of the same signi- 
 fication, meaning people in the woods or wilds. 
 
 Knowing now that the Greeks descended from the Phoenicians, 
 we say they also had a Celtic origin, and that their language is 
 Celt. The Phoenician navigators undoubtedly found their 
 way through the straits of Hercules, and planted a colony on 
 the river Iberus, and the inhabitants from that time were called 
 Celtiberians, and their early language was similar to the Greek. 
 They then coasted along the shores of France, and left a colony 
 in Brittany and the Armenian dialect of that region is still the 
 Celtic. Another colony was formed by the same bold naviga- 
 tors and traders on the coast of Cornwall, in England or Brit- 
 ain, as also in Wales, where that original Celtic tongue is still 
 spoken in its original purity. Ireland and the coast of Scotland 
 were also visited by them as favored places of trade and col- 
 onization, and the Milesians were probably of the same race or 
 
23 
 
 people wbo invaded Ireland a few hundred years afterwards. 
 They also colonized the north-western coast of Norway, as 
 we learn from the ancient sagas. In returning from the Ger- 
 man ocean, through the British Channel, they also planted a 
 a colony in Denmark, and their descendents there were subse- 
 quently called Cimbrians as were their decendents in Wales 
 called Cambrians, names of the same origin and meaning. 
 
 These currents of emigration can be conclusively traced by 
 the Cetlic or Phoenician alphabet and language. The Scots or 
 Scotii were Celts, and it is in fact the same meaning " woods- 
 man," and the same race. 
 
 The original country of Iberus was afterwards and is still 
 called Armenia, and we know that the Armenian language is 
 cognate to our own, in its original form and structure, more 
 even than the Greek or the Eoman. The Roman language is a 
 derivative from the Greek, with the forms of some of the letters 
 changed only, and with different affixes and prefixes, and pro- 
 nounciation of the original words. 
 
 Then so far we have the Iberians of Caucasus, the Phoeni- 
 cians on the Eastern coast of the Mediteranean, the Greeks 
 and Romans, and also the Carthaginians who were known to 
 have been Phoenician colonists, tke settlements along the At- 
 lantic coast of Europe on the British Islands and in ancient 
 Scandinavia, were the same people, with same language and of 
 similar conformation, completion and temperament. Next we 
 will enquire, who were the numerous tribes and people who 
 passed with the ancients by the general names of Scythians and 
 Gauls ? AH the unknown country beyond the Euxine and Cas- 
 pian seas, was called Scy thia, whether in Europe or Asia. Who 
 were these Scythians ? Is it to be supposed that the Iberians or 
 the Phoenicians, which is the same thing, were such bold and 
 interprising navigators and explorers as to visit the -remote 
 places I have mentioned on the Atlantic, and did not navi- 
 gate these inland seas lying contiguous to their territories, and 
 the great rivers coming into them from the North and West, 
 the Danube, the Dneiper, the Don and the Yolga ? 
 
24 
 
 We know from history that Darius, the Persian King, once 
 invaded Scythia on the Danube, and was unable to penetrate 
 far into the country, against the numerous and warlike inhabit- 
 ants. They taught the Persian King the futility of his inva- 
 sion of their country unless his soldiers could swim like a fish, 
 fly like a bird, creep, through the bushes like a mouse, and es- 
 cape the arrows of the Scythians. These Persian invaders 
 gave the same account of the appearance of the people, their 
 modes of warfare, their habits, customs and language, as the 
 Roman invaders did, nearly a thousand years afterwards. It ' 
 is sufficient, that these people were all called Scythians, the 
 other name for Celts. They spread all over Europe by these 
 rivers and their tributaries, and over the western portion of 
 Asia. They navigated the Baltic Sea' and spread ovet Scandi- 
 navia, and for centuries held undisputed possession of the rich- 
 est portions of Europe and Asia, and again met and com- 
 mingled with their Celtic kindred along the coast of the Atlan- 
 tic. They were the tribes that formed the first civil govern- 
 ments, rude it may be, but protective of liberty, in Germany, 
 France, Spain, Russia, the British Islands and Scandinavia, 
 and who by the invasion of the Roman army were invited back 
 again to the shores of the Mediterranean, and swept away like 
 an avalanche, the foundations of Roman power and dominion. 
 
 The Romans gave many of these tribes names significant of 
 their peculiarities, or geographical location. The Germans, 
 the Gauls, the Franks, the Saxons, the Phrygians, the Teutons, 
 4he Cimbrians, the Jutes, the Angles, the Northumbrians, 
 the Burgundians, the Northmen or Normans, the Goths, the 
 Yandals, the Huns, the Sclavonians, the Britons, the Plots, 
 Scots and Hibernians, and many other titles, but by the de- 
 scription of Tacitus and C^sar, and other writers, all these 
 tribes were essentially the same people, and had a similar lan- 
 guage and civil institutions, and religious observances. In 
 short, they were the Celtic tribes that centuries before had 
 swarmed from the Caucasian hive and increased to numerous 
 
25 
 
 tribes and nations and millions of people, the wonderful and 
 irresistible barbarians of the North. 
 
 In time, these tribes invade England, the Phrygians, Saxons, 
 and Angles in the South, and the Danes in the North, and meet 
 and mingle with the Celtic Britons, and form the British na- 
 tion, true to their native proclivity to intermixure and im- 
 provement. About the same time they begin to intermix and 
 establish nations all over Europe, and Europe becomes essen- 
 tially Gothic, in language, in governments, laws, customs and 
 architecture. They settle in Spain, as Yandals, and name the 
 most beautiful portions of it Yandalusia or Andalusia, in Hun- 
 gary as Huns, in Normandy as Normans, and in France as the 
 Franks. 
 
 They have formed all the governments and institutions of 
 modern times, revived the learning of the past, and made all 
 the improvements and discoveries that render our era the most 
 remarkable in the history of the world. In the 10th Century 
 the Normans invade England and conquer their Saxon kin- 
 dred and again intermix. Before leaving England, I cannot 
 but notice an important incident somewhat illustrative of my 
 subject. The Prince of Wales, and heir to the British throne, 
 is a striking illustration of a race run out, by consanguineous 
 intermarriage, the feeble scion of the interbreeding House of 
 Hanover. Either the Queen, God bless her, or some thought- 
 ful, British statesman has married this effeminate Prince to one 
 of the daughters of one of the Scandinavian sea-kings, and this 
 infusion of vigorous blood will renew the lease of this royal 
 line to the British throne. 
 
 In addition to the evidence already given of the original 
 language of these tribes of the Celtic stock being still the same, 
 only varied by dialectical differences, and retaining the radical 
 elements of language easily traced, we have only to look upon 
 the map of Europe and notice the termination of geographical 
 names with the Phoenecian word "Berg," or "Burgh," or 
 "Borough," they will find them in Eussia and all other Euro- 
 
26 
 
 pean countries. Besides, they have the familiar words father, 
 mother, brother, sister, home, happiness, heaven, fire, stone, 
 table, chair and hat, and hundreds of others common to all 
 the languages of Europe as well as to the Armenian, the Greek 
 and Eoman. 
 
 While on this subject we must not forget to observe, that 
 the highest evidence of the progress of our race consists in the 
 increased volume and perfected system of our common lan- 
 guages, by the kindred nations of our stock. 
 
 The Grreeks cultivated and improved their language by the 
 addition of words and combinations to express their refine- 
 ments of thought and literary excellence to a greater degree 
 than any of the nations of antiquity — but they had only about 
 20,000 words. In our copious and cultivated English speech 
 we have over 100,000 words, and many of the languages of 
 the Continent are of nearly equal volume. This is evi- 
 dence of a vast increase of ideas and of the necessities of ver- 
 bal communicati(m commensurate with the astonishing im- 
 provements of the age. Thus our languages are becoming 
 more and more dissimilar. Already the immortal Chaucer, 
 the father of English literature, has to be read by English schol- 
 ars by the aid of a Saxon dictionary, and it will not be long 
 before the wonderful Shakspeare will be unintelligible to the 
 English speaking world. The time will come when the struc- 
 ture of all our now modern languages will be materially modi- 
 fied, and the original root of words difficult to find^ by the 
 gradual changes in orthography and pronunciation, as well 
 as in the use and meaning of even the original words of 
 the Gothic stock. Investigation in philology is now command- 
 ing the time and attention of the greatest scholars of the age, 
 and this interesting field of research should invite the labors of 
 the learned before the means of a definite determination 
 of the origin of modern languages and of their affinities 
 shall have been lost or obscured by the silent but constant mu- 
 tations effected by time and the changing conditions of nations. 
 
27 
 
 The " Babel" of the the superstitious and credulous ancients, 
 and the confusion of tongues, attributed to miracle, are but the 
 natural changes of language through long ages of time, by pro- 
 cesses perfectly familiar to modern intelligence. 
 
 It is a pleasing reflection that the cultivated nations of our 
 time are so nearly related by blood and language as to be still 
 the same and perfected type of the common stock and prime- 
 val race, and that all of their history and their achievements in 
 arts, science and literature, civil policies, laws and religion are 
 the joint and common property. 
 
 After the dark ages, letters revived contemporaneously, m 
 Italy, France, Spain, Germany, .Denmark and England, and 
 modern governments and modern literature and learning were 
 the out-growth of our common Gothic stock and origin, 
 improving upon all the learning and wisdom of the past — 
 Boccaccio, Dante and Petrarch, Goethe, Schiller and 
 Chaucer, Cervantes, Shakspeare, Bacon, Burns, Scott, 
 Moore, Burke and Christian Andersen belong to our 
 common race and language. 
 
 The Byzantine Empire, constructed on the ruins of Imperial 
 Eome, the British Empire, and our own grand and free repub- 
 lic, were of common origin, and the immortal Alfred and 
 Charlemagne and their renowned knights, were blue-eyed 
 cousins, and their marvellous deeds in arms and gallantry, in 
 common with the wild warriors and stormy sea-kings of the 
 land of Odin, form the common refrain of the songs of 
 the Troubadours, Trouvesters and Minstrels of the Continent, 
 the Scalds of Scandinavia, and the Bards of Britian. What a 
 grand, pure and poetic religion, that made heaven the place of 
 glorious rewards for virtue and bravery, and peopled hell with 
 sneaking traitors and trembling cowards ; that made angels of 
 women and ministering vestals the companions of the gallant 
 and the brave ; that peopled the everglades and avenues of 
 the dark woods with elves, sprites and fairies ; that wove gar- 
 lands and told domestic stories to adorn and cheer their social 
 
28 ■ 
 
 homes, and bind together the unities of the household and the 
 heartb. We still retain, in their mild and beneficent influences, 
 although, perhaps, forgetful of their original significance, these 
 household rites, cermonies, stories and songs, common to our 
 paternal race ; and our youth and maidens still dance and play 
 beneath the mistletoe bough, with our Celtic ancesters among 
 the Druid oaks of Britian, Here in America the same races 
 again commingle to work out a still higher development and 
 a grander and more glorious national destiny. 
 
 In our government and institutions we have improved upon 
 all the splendid models of the past, in the interest of freedom, 
 of thought and conscience, of civil liberty and equal rights. 
 We have sprung into existence as a nation full grown, like the 
 fabled goddess from the head of Jupiter, and our first great 
 statesmen and philosophers rivaled those of any age or coun- 
 try. We started upon our national career from the highest 
 vantage ground of history, holding in our hands the accumu- 
 lated possessions of our wonder-working race of thousands and 
 thousands of years. We have planted our empire upon a new 
 and wide Oontinent,covered with renovated richness and beauty, 
 but concealing beneath the soil the relics and ruins of extin- 
 guished and mysterious races of men, whose strange history it 
 is our business to explore to the extent of our cultivated ability. 
 We are employing every means that an intelligent liberality 
 can suggest, to gather up the threads and vestiges of the 
 preceding occupants of this Western World, and to preserve the 
 stirring and stormy incidents and events of our own early set- 
 tlements and subsequent history. To this end, we have form- 
 ed and cherished our Historical Collection and Society in our 
 own favored and rapidly improving State. 
 
 Our material physical progress, discoveries and improve- 
 ments, in the last half century, have excelled those of all past 
 time. Our moral and intellectual advancement should, and I 
 trust will, keep pace with our national and material aggrand- 
 izement. For what we do for the moral and intellectual ele- 
 
29 
 
 vation and refinement of our people, for the diffusion of gen- 
 eral education and knowledge, for the purification of the chan- 
 nels of our public opinion, for the cultivation of letters, litera- 
 ture and law, for the pure practices of our consistent, humaniz- 
 ing and soul-saving and holy religion, and for the preservation of 
 our history in imperishable records and archives, future gener- 
 ations will rise up to call us blessed. 
 
 Permit me to say a word more particularly concerning the 
 Society, whose anniversary we are here to celebrate. In the 
 winter of 1854, I had the honor to introduce the bill in this 
 Assembly Hall for the first organization of the society as a 
 State institution. In the summer of 1852, I also had the hon- 
 or to write one of the letters that brought to our State and to 
 this infant Society, from the city of Philadelphia, our invalua- 
 ble and worthy Corresponding Secretary, Lyman C. Deafer, 
 whose indefatigable labors under the fostening care of the 
 State*, have accomplished such grand and magnificent results 
 for our Society. In this short time our library proper has 
 grown from the contents of a small case of three feet by six, 
 to 35,000 volumes, and our collection of memorials, manu- 
 scripts, geological and mineral specimens, and the other num- 
 berless things of interest and incalculable value, now fill and 
 adorn an entire wing of the capital, and are already densely 
 packed and crowded for want of more space Mr. Deafer, 
 our Secretary, is a small, and feeble man, and we may not long 
 enjoy the active benefits of his correspondence and labor. 
 While we have him, we should value and encourage him. He 
 is worth his weight in gold to this Society and the State. 
 
 My friend D. S. Durrie, the Librarian, who has long devoted 
 his entire time to the arranging, preserving and indexing this 
 valuable collection of historical matter, has become as familiar 
 to us as the binding of his books, and has nearly lost his iden- 
 tity among the collected specimens of the department, deserves 
 justly, as he receives, the appeciative recognition of the State 
 for his long and faithful service to the Society. 
 
30 
 
 Permit me to thank you, my fellow-citizens and the members 
 of the Legislature, for your patronage of, and interest in this 
 Society, and, on behalf of myself, for your kind attention and 
 patient hearing of this wandering discussion and unsatisfactory 
 address. And, finally, from our high stand-point, at this fav- 
 ored time and age of the world, while we look back over the 
 misty mazes of the world's history, until our vision is lost in 
 the dark back ground of antiquity, and see nation after nation 
 like succeeding generations of men, marching in solemn pro- 
 cession one after another to the burial of the dusty dead, let 
 us not forget the sad warning that comes to us from the mourn- 
 ful past, like a funeral knell : 
 
 " The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power, 
 All that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave, 
 Await alike tlie inevitable hour, 
 The paths of glory lead but to the grave." 
 
OONDITIOK OF THE SOCIETY. 
 
 A synopsis of the Annual Report of the Society, Jan. 1, 
 1869, shows : That the receipts into the General Fund the 
 past year were $1,075.92 ; disbursements $803; 63, together 
 with $56.63 collected as members' fees, donations, &c., trans- 
 ferred to the Binding Fund, which, with $8 accruing interest, 
 has increased that Fund from $108.10 last year, to |172.73. 
 We respectfully plead for contributions to iBiis permanent and 
 much needed Fund. 
 
 The past and present condition of the Library are shown in 
 the following table ; 
 
 1854, January 1. 
 
 1855, January 2. 
 
 1856, January 1. 
 
 1857, January 6. 
 
 1858, January 1. 
 
 1859, January 4. 
 
 1860, January 3. 
 
 1861, January 2, 
 
 1862, January 2. 
 
 1863, January 2. 
 
 1864, January 2. 
 
 1865, January 3. 
 
 1866, January 2. 
 
 1867, January 3. 
 
 1868, January 4. 
 
 1869, January 1. 
 
 The British Patent Office Reports have formed the extraor- 
 dinary addition of the year to the Library, extending over a 
 period from 1617 to the present time, and numbering 2,392 
 
 Vols. 
 
 Docs. & 
 
 Both 
 
 Total 
 
 Added. 
 
 Pamp'ff. 
 
 Together. 
 
 in Lib. 
 
 50 
 
 
 '60 
 
 50 
 
 1 , 000 
 
 1,000 
 
 2,000 
 
 2,050 
 
 1 ,065 
 
 2,000 
 
 3,065 
 
 5,115 
 
 1,005 
 
 300 
 
 1 , 305 
 
 6,420 
 
 1 , 024 
 
 959 
 
 1,988 
 
 8,403 
 
 1,107 
 
 500 
 
 1 , 607 
 
 10,010 
 
 1 , 800 
 
 723 
 
 2,528 
 
 12,635 
 
 837 
 
 1,134 
 
 1,971 
 
 14,5(14 
 
 610 
 
 711 
 
 1,321 
 
 15,825 
 
 544 
 
 2,373 
 
 2,917 
 
 18,742 
 
 248 
 
 354 
 
 604 
 
 19,346 
 
 520 
 
 226 
 
 746 
 
 20,092 
 
 368 
 
 806 
 
 1,174 
 
 21,266 
 
 923 
 
 2,811 
 
 3,7;!4 
 
 25,000 
 
 5,462 
 
 1,043 
 
 6 , 505 
 
 81,505 
 
 2,838 
 
 682 
 
 3,520 
 
 85,025 
 
 19,401 
 
 15,654 
 
 85,025 
 
 
32 
 
 volumes. We are indebted to the British Government fc>r 
 this valuable donation. 
 
 The bound newspaper files now number 1,428 volumes, of 
 which 146 were published in the last century. The Picture 
 Gallery has been increased by four oil portraits, making sixty- 
 six altogether. Large additions have been made to the 
 Cabinet. 
 
 « 
 
OFFIOEES OF THE SOCIETY-18G9. 
 
 PRESIDENT : 
 
 INCKEASE A. LAPHAM, LL. D., Milwaukee. 
 
 VICE president: 
 
 Hon. HENRY S. BAIRD, Green Bay, Hon. L. J. FARWELL, Westpoit, 
 
 Hon. ED. SALOMON, Milwaukee, Hon. JAMES SUTHERLAND. Janesville, 
 
 Hon. JAS. R. DOOLITTLE, Racine, Hon. H. D. BARRON, St. Croix Palls. 
 
 Hon. JAMES T. LEWIS, Columbus, Hon. ALEX. MITCHELL, Milwaukee, 
 
 Hon, HARLOW S. ORTON, Watertown, Hon. A. A. TOWNSEND, Shullsburg. 
 
 HONORARY VICE PRESIDENTS : 
 
 1. Hon. CYRTTS WOODMAN, Mass., 3. Hon. HENRY S. RANDALL, N. Y., 
 
 2. Hon. PERRY H. SMITH, 111., 4. Hon. JOHN CATLIN, N. J., 
 
 5. Hon. STEPHEN TAYLOR, Fenn. 
 
 / 
 
 CORRESPONDING SECRETARY : 
 
 LYMAN C. DRAPER. 
 
 RECORDING SECRETARY : 
 
 Col. S. V. SHIPMAN. 
 
 TREASURER : 
 
 A. H. MAIN. 
 
 LIBRARIAN : 
 
 DANIEL'S. DURRIE. 
 
 curators: 
 
 Ex- Officio. 
 
 Hon. L. FAIRCniLD, Hon. THOS. S. ALLEN. Hon. W. E. SMITH, 
 
 Governor. Secretary of State. State Treasurer. 
 
 For One Tears, For Two Years, For Three Yeart, 
 
 Hon. D. WORTHINGTON, Gen. SIMEON MILLS, Gov. L. FAIRCHILD, 
 
 Hon. P. A. CHADBOURNE, Hon. G1<;0. B. SMITH, Hon. E. B. DEAN, 
 
 Prof. J. 1). BUTLER, Gen. G. P. DELAPLAINE, Col. F. H. FIRMIN, 
 
 Prof. S. H. CARPENTER, Dr. JOSEPH IIOBBINS, Hon. L. B. VILAS, 
 
 Hod JAMES ROSS, Hon.A.II.VAN NOSTRAND, Gen. D. ATWOOD, 
 
 N. B. VAN SLYKE, S. U. PINNEY. Hon. HORACE RUBLEE, 
 
 J. D. GURNEE, Hon. E. W. KEYES, O. M. CONOVER, 
 
 E. W. SKINNER, JAS. L. HILL, Hon. JOHN Y. SMITH, 
 
 W. A. CROFFUT, Hon. S. D. HASTINGS, B. J. STEVENS. 
 
 Objects op Collection.— The Society earnestly solicits of every editor and publisher 
 of a newspaper or periodical in the State the regular transmission of such publication' 
 Books and pamphlets on all subjects of interest or reference; Magazines; Newspaper 
 Files; Maps; ;Engravings; Portraits of Wisconsin pioneers and other prominent per- 
 sonages; War and Indian relics, and other curiosities; Narratives of Early Settlement, 
 Hardships, Border Wars, and of the part borne by Wisconsin men in the late war of the 
 rebellion. 
 
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 
 
 016 097 938 #