The Pilgrims

Wendell Phillips

When we undertake to criticise the Pilgrims, we ought first to ask ourselves the question, where would they be to-day? Indeed, to be as good as our fathers, we must be better. Imitation is not discipleship. Thee and thou, a stationary hat, bad grammar and worse manners, with an ugly coat, are not George Fox to-day. You will recognize him in any one who rises from the lap of artificial life, flings away its softness, and startles you with the sight of a man. Neither do I acknowledge the right of Plymouth to the whole rock. No, the rock underlies all America; it only crops out here. It has cropped out a great many times in our history. You may recognize it always. Old Putnam stood upon it at Bunker Hill, when he said to the Yankee boys: "Don't fire till you see the whites of their eyes." Ingraham had it for ballast when he put his little sloop between two Austrian frigates, and threatened to blow them out of the water if they did not respect the flag of the United States in the case of Martin Koozta. Jefferson had it for a writing-desk when he drafted the Declaration of Independence and the "Statute of Religious Liberty" for Virginia. Lovejoy rested his musket upon it when they would not let him print his paper at Alton, and he said: "Death or free speech!" Ay! it cropped out again. Garrison had it for an imposing-stone when he looked into the faces of seventeen millions of angry men, and printed his sublime pledge, "I will not retreat a single inch, and I will be heard."

If I were going to raise a monument to the Pilgrims, I know where I should place it. I should place one corner-stone on the rock, and the other on that level spot where fifty of the one hundred were buried before the winter was over; but the remainder closed up shoulder to shoulder as firm, unflinching, hopeful as ever. Yes, death rather than compromise of Elizabeth. I would write on their monument two mottoes: One, "The Right is more than our Country!" and over the graves of the fifty: "Death, rather than Compromise!"

How true it is that the Pilgrims originated no new truth! How true it is, also, that it is not truth which agitates the world! Plato in the groves of the Academy sounded on and on to the utmost depth of philosophy, but Athens was quiet. Calling around him the choicest minds of Greece, he pointed out the worthlessness of their altars and shame of public life, but Athens was quiet. It was all speculation. When Socrates walked the streets of Athens, and, questioning every-day life, struck the altar till the faith of the passer-by faltered, it came close to action; and immediately they gave him hemlock, for the city was turned upside down. What the Pilgrims gave the world was not thought, but action. Men, calling themselves thinkers, had been creeping along the Mediterranean, from headland to headland, in their timidity; the Pilgrims launched boldly out into the Atlantic and trusted God. That is the claim they have upon posterity. It was action that made them what they were.