THE LOSS OF A GREAT AMERICAN
Hurlbut, John Bingham
The Loss of a Great American Life Work of Mr. La Follette Used as Theme of Winning Oration in the University of California By JOHN BINGHAM HURLBUT This winning oration on Mr. La Follette was...
...Early in life his keen intellect had sensed the trend of modern civilization, soulless and materialistic—the tragedy of industrial monarchs and a population of industrial slaves driven before the lash of iron and steel...
...He was sentenced to be placed in a pillory, to be branded with the letters SS in the ball of the right hand, to be kept in solitary confin ment for a year and to pay a fine of $600 and costs of prosecution...
...I shall call him the Lincoln of his time, standing a lone figure, silhouetted against the background of skepticism, greed, and hatred...
...And when history is written and the prejudice of the present day has disappeared, men will find Robert M. La Follette not as a demagogue —not as a dreamer of idle dreams—but as pioneer, as a blazer of trails of perfect political thought...
...The branding was ordered in 1844 by a federal district court...
...With my father I was in his room shortly before he was to leave for the auditorium...
...With extraordinary insight and understanding — understanding which could come only from a great mind and a greater heart—he strove that each might better understand the other...
...Suddenly he was stricken with violent pain and lay writhing in agony...
...He dedicated his life to the principle that government should be the guardian of the interests of all of the people and of no one class...
...Branded Hand Marks Abolitionist Grave THE body of the "man with the branded hand," of the man who suffered a peculiar punishment for attempting to free negro slaves 20 years before the Civil war lies in the Evergreen cemetery at Muskegon, Mich...
...Firm in his conviction of right, he stood an epic figure, undaunted even when the war-maddened mobs fanned the fires of persecution into flame...
...He attempted to convey seven slaves from Florida to freedom on the island of Nassau in the Bahamas...
...How charged with punishment the scroll...
...they need me...
...I do not know how the people feel toward me, but I carry to my grave my love for them, which has sustained me through life...
...Hurlbut is a son of Judge and Mrs...
...I shall never forget an incident which so deeply impressed me of my hero's courage...
...1 can see him now as he lay in his flag-draped coffin at the foot of the white-robed liberty, under the very words which, years before, his hand had inscribed on those marble walls— "The will of the people shall be the law of the land...
...It was scarcely a month since he had returned from Mayo Brothers' hospital, and the wound was still fresh in his side...
...THOUGH the voice of Robert M. La Follette is stilled in death, the words of his mighty message are as if emblazoned upon the heavens, and the world shall long remember him—remember him as "an embattled prophet of a new democracy dedicated to intelligence, and organized on the free principle of a full and satisfying life to every individual soul...
...But, leap as they would, those flames could not engulf and devour him...
...He recognized that such a civilization v/as founded upon a fallacy because it ignored humanism...
...He placed his powerful personality, his gigantic intellect, his tenacity of purpose as a harrier between the two forces...
...W. E. Hurlbut of Omro, Wisconsin...
...BUT that weary heart, weakened from so many a battle, finally yielded...
...He said, "I favor equal and exact justice to every interest, yielding neither to the clamor on one hand, nor being swerved from the straight path by an interest on the other...
...WE SHALL remember him because of his determination, because of his loyalty and his sincerity...
...Every clause of the sentence was duly executed...
...Washington Star...
...Take it henceforth for your standard, like the Bruce's heart of yore...
...That was Robert M. La Follette's undying devotion...
...men of Massachusetts, for the love of God, look there...
...Since early childhood he has been my best friend, and my ideal—so that anything 1 may say of him can but poorly express my feelings...
...Throngs were coming back to mingle with their classmates of yesterday and to witness the two thousand black-robed seniors march up for their degrees...
...those words represent his heart, his soul, his very life...
...Walker suffered from prison fever, but he lived through the sentence...
...He was detected, brought to Pensacola, Fla., tried as a thief in the United States federal court and convicted...
...Jonathan Walker was a Cape Cod mariner and, in 1844, captain of a vessel engaged in coastwise trade...
...The Christian Register...
...In the dark strife closing round ye, let that hand be seen before...
...We shall remember him, gallant, courageous, sublime, a leader who flinched not even when the iron was driven into his soul...
...He died in 1878...
...Home—not to attend his class reunion, not to greet his friends of college days—but home from the wars of politics to rest in a marble sepulcher in the magnificent statehouse built high above the deep blue lakes of his homeland—the state-house which he himself had conceived...
...And when humanism replaces materialism (and such must come if we endure), when a life becomes more than a dollar sign, more than a lump of steel, men will find that Robert M. La Follette died not in vain...
...Throngs were coming back to Madison to wander over the hills, the woods, and around the lakes—the beautiful campus of the University of Wisconsin...
...Those rugged features are determined in death as they were in life, but that brave heart which carried him through so many a battle is still...
...And for him— "It mattered not how straight the gate...
...These were the words of "Fighting Bob" La Follette as he was about to embark into the fast receding tide—as he was about to meet his Maker—his Captain—face to face...
...For he was master of his fate, He was Captain of his soul...
...that government in our great country might be a "servant of human rather than material interests...
...The poet John Whittier besought the captain to hold aloft his branded right hand for all the world to see...
...You and 1 have lost a friend...
...Oh, surely, he did not enter eternity with a mask...
...He bought a few acres of land at Lake Harbor, five miles from Muskegon, and there took up the raising of fruit...
...I HAVE chosen to speak in eulogy of a great man...
...He became a hero and martyr in the north and was prominent as one of the leaders in the fight against slavery...
...June in Wisconsin...
...An excerpt from the bill follows: "Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, that the Secretary of Labor is hereby empowered to admit, they or any of them being so willing, them into United States citizenry without further formalities and to bestow upon them final citizenship papers...
...Then it was that Robert M. La Follette came home...
...Walker was then 45...
...La Follette was written by John Bingham Hurlbut, nineteen years of age, a Junior in the University of California, and for three semesters a student in the University of Wisconsin, and delivered by him in oratorical contests in Los Angeles and Pasadena, California...
...As he lay on his death bed he uttered these last words, "I am at peace with the world, yet there is still much that I could do...
...He tells the Missouri teachers, "We no longer burn our hereties...
...Jonathan Walker came north following his prison sentence and his branded hand was heralded throughout the country...
...AS CLEAR AS MUD A bill introduced in the House last week by Representative Celler of New York to bestow citizenship upon the seamen of the steamship President Roosevelt, who took part in the rescue of the crew of the British steamer Antinoe, presents an interesting study in grammatical construction which the teachers may save and give to their pupils in English tomorrow...
...Glenn Frank's elevation to the presidency of a university hasn't made him solemn yet...
...He was scheduled to speak in a certain Wisconsin city...
...We shall remember him because he was human—so human, in fact, that the very people who tore his portrait from the hall of fame, who burned him in effigy, who called him dreamer, heretic, rebel—now stand with bared heads at the mention of his name...
...With this oration its author won the annual inter-fraternity oratorical contest, the Pi Kappa Delta Oratorical Silver Cup in a field of twenty contesting fraternities, the University tryouts and represented the University of California in the annual intercollegiate oratorical contest, and won the forensic prize awarded by the University of California—all in May and June of 1926.—Editor's Note...
...Consecrated to this principle he girt his armor and staunchly took his stand on the side of the worker, the oppressed, that an ideal might be a reality—that freedom might be more than a tradition, a living, vital force...
...the world has lost a noble man...
...that unconquerable will is calm . . . He is dead...
...The man with the branded hand came to Muskegon county in 1863 to live...
...we fire them...
...I have never failed them,—I WILL NOT NOW...
...And so he arose, and later amid the cheers of many thousand people, gave one of the most eloquent addresses of his whole career...
...Their glow could only reflect to the world the heroism of one of the greatest of America's sons...
...My father pleaded with him not to go, to give up his engagement, but he said, "No—they are waiting for me...
...this country has lost a great statesman...
...Staunch, dauntless, fearless, incorruptible he stood, protecting and defending those ideals of government which he loved...
...Capt...
...Fearless and impregnable, he stood a challenge to special privilege, a champion of the downtrodden, before whom wealth, and arrogance, and power stood atremlble...
...He was then 64...
...He wrote: Hold it up before our sunshine, up against the northern air— Ho...
...The grave is marked by a granite obelisk on one side of which is carved the hand branded with the letters SS which stand for "slave stealer...
...The man was Jonathan Walker...
Vol. 18 • November 1926 • No. 11
