Down with party, sect, and class, and up with a sentiment of unanimity when our country calls to arms!  New England leads us in the contest.  The legions of Vermont are now en route for the field.  Again, she can say with truth that “the bones of her sons lie mingling and bleaching with the soil of every State from Maine to Georgia, and there they will lie forever.”  New York must not be behind the Old Bay State which led a year ago.  In the spirit world, Warren calls to Hamilton, and Hamilton calls back to Warren, that hand in hand their mortal children go on together to fame, to victory, or to the grave.  Where the ranks are full, let us catch an inspiration from the past, and with it upon us go forth to conflict.  Go call the roll on Saratoga, Bunker Hill, and Yorktown, that the sheeted dead may rise as witnesses, and tell your legions of the effort to dissolve their Union, and there receive their answer.  Mad with frenzy, burning with indignation at the thought, all ablaze for vengeance upon the traitors, such shall be the fury and impetuosity of the onset that all opposition shall be swept away before them, as the pigmy yields to the avalanche that comes tumbling, rumbling, thundering from its Alpine home!  Let us gather at the tomb of Washington and invoke his immortal spirit to direct us in the combat.  Rising again incarnate from the tomb, in one hand he holds that same old flag, blackened and begrimed with the smoke of a seven-years’ war, and with the other hand be points us to the foe.  Up and at them!  Let immortal energy strengthen our arms, and infernal fury thrill us to the soul.  One blow,—­deep, effectual, and forever,—­one crushing blow upon the rebellion, in the name of God, Washington, and the Republic!

FISHER AMES (1758-1808)

Fisher Ames is easily first among the New England Federalist orators of the first quarter of a century of the Republic.  He was greatly, sometimes extravagantly, admired by his contemporaries, and his addresses are studied as models by eminent public speakers of our own day.  Dr. Charles Caldwell in his autobiography calls Ames “one of the most splendid rhetoricians of his age.” . . .  “Two of his speeches,” writes Doctor Caldwell, “that on Jay’s Treaty and that usually called his Tomahawk speech, because it included some resplendent passages on Indian massacre, were the most brilliant and fascinating specimens of eloquence I have ever heard, though I have listened to some of the most eloquent speakers in the British Parliament,—­among others to Wilberforce and Mackintosh, Plunkett, Brougham, and Canning.  Doctor Priestly who was familiar with the oratory of Pitt the father, and Pitt the son, as also with that of Burke and Fox, made to myself the acknowledgment that the speech of Ames on the British treaty was ’the most bewitching piece of eloquence’ to which he had ever listened.”