BY ARCHBISHOP JOHN IRELAND.
To James Shields, the soldier, the statesman, the jurist, honor is paid by the citizenship of Minnesota. A monument of him is enthroned in the hall of the Capitol of the State, there to perpetuate his name and memory, to the intent that coming generations may know him, and, knowing him, emulate in the service of humanity and of country his deeds of noble and disinterested patriotism and valor.
No unusual occurrence is it in America that a monument be built to pay honor to James Shields. In the Hall of Fame, beneath the dome of the Capitol of the nation in Washington, stands his figure, placed there by the State of Illinois, when it was summoned to name to America's admiring vision two of its most distinguished citizens. A statue also has been erected to him by the State of Missouri, in the public square of the City of Carrollton. Minnesota may well, without fear or peril of blame, do as its sister states, Illinois and Missouri, have done,—extol the fame of “the Jurist, the Statesman, the Soldier,” James Shields,—and do so with especial joyousness, inasmuch as at one period of his career he was a citizen and a loyal servant of our commonwealth.
From 1855 to 1860 James Shields claimed Minnesota as his home. While commissioner of the Federal Land Office in Washington, he had learnt of the fertility of our fields and the salubriousness of our climate, and had resolved, that, when freed from the toils of public office, he would draw hither colonists from the ranks of his fellow Irishmen in the Eastern States and in Ireland itself, less likely to find elsewhere than in Minnesota peace and prosperity. He became one of the proprietors and
James Shields was the Irishman and the American,—the Irishman by birth, temper, and education, the American by loyalty and service,—the Irishman and the American to a typical degree. His whole career is summed up in those words, the Irishman and the American.
I give the outlines of his life. He was born in Ireland in 1806, of honorable and respected lineage. His direct ancestor, with four sons, fought on the losing side in the battle of the Boyne,—one of those sons later joining the army of Spain, and there rising from one honor to another until finally he was commissioned the Captain General of Cuba. An immediate uncle of our hero was a soldier in America's revolutionary war and in that of 1812. James decidedly sprung from a family in which fear of the battlefield was unknown. In his native isle he received, mainly through the tutorship of another uncle, a priest who had been a professor in the College of Maynooth, a liberal education. At the age of sixteen he emigrated from Ireland in search of fortune in other lands. Arrived in America, he first adopted a seafaring life, afterwards serving as a soldier in the Seminole War, thence pushing westward to Kaskaskia, at the time the Territorial capital of Illinois. There he was the school-teacher,
A wonderful career, that of James Shields, in the picturesqueness of its varieties, in the confidences reposed in him by his fellow Americans from Illinois to Washington City, from Minnesota to Missouri, in the enthusiasms his name everywhere was wont to evoke; and wonderful, equally so, in the talents he
Fellow Americans, we announce a noble name, when that of James Shields is spoken; we glorify a noble memory, when we fling out his figure to the gratitude and the admiration of Americans of today, of Americans of tomorrow.
To what do we attribute these manifold honors, bedecking the years in the career of James Shields?
It is plain from the record that James Shields was no intriguer in politics, no shrewd, insidious wire-puller. He was ignorant of the arts of combinations and machineries. He was the single-minded and the open-tongued citizen. He simply showed himself as he was, willing to take what was offered, unwilling, unable even, to plan for favor of preferment. He was the old-fashioned knight, without fear, but, also, without reproach. Nor, as distinction of office came, was he cunning in schemes to retain it. He did his duty, regardless of consequences, regardless of the dictates of the political party that had entrusted him with power, bidding friends and foes to judge his deeds on their bare desert. At all times, and in all stations, he was James Shields, to be taken, or to be pushed aside, for what he was, for what he was believed to be.
To what, then, is due his career? To personal character and qualifications; to value of service rendered, whatever the position to which he was lifted; to the willingness of America to recognize and reward merit, wherever merit is discernible.
Shields was the good man. His private life was above reproach. No weakness was his in the use of drink; no moral stain ever darkened his escutcheon. In him deep religious conviction begot the personal and social virtues, and brightened their uses and practices. I might, perhaps, blame the impetuosity
Shields was the gentleman, in manner polished and refined; in the maintenance of principle, the soul itself of honor and integrity. A base proposal would have at once awakened in him indignant ire. To give service, to friend or to foe, was the imperious dictate of his code of chivalry.
We read of the typical Irish gentleman. That was Shields, warm Celtic blood ever coursing in his veins, kingly Irish traditions ever ruling heart and head. He had the Celtic faults,— he was emotional, maybe now and then too quick in decision, too impatient, perhaps, for his own welfare, too much of a rover and a seeker of new things. But at times those very faults served him well, as when his sword was brandished on the battlefield. And with Celtic faults he had all the Celtic virtues. Brave he was and valorous, generous of gift and service, the high-tempered knight, whose flashing passage across the ranks of fellow-men sheds over our world of dull matter and selfish plodding the sunshine of uplifting poetry, the sweetness of the supernal life.
Shields was the scholar. His early liberal education served him well, and continuous study through the years increased its brilliancy and power. And, of course, he was the orator, holding, as charmed victims of his fiery phrase and his orphean voice, no less the sages of legislative and senatorial halls than the ruder and less thinking multitudes of voters of Kaskaskia, Vandalia, and Springfield.
Rushed from one occupation to another, from one political office to another, he was at home, whatever the duties assigned to him. His talents were most varied in kind. As lawyer and as justice of the Supreme Court of Illinois, he had his reward in the genial companionship and the esteem of great men, of whom Illinois was at the time the plentiful parent, and all America the proud beneficiary,—Abraham Lincon, John M. Palmer, E. B. Washburn, Stephen T. Logan, to name but the few. As Auditor of the State of Illinois, he wrested from confusion and uncertainty its financial budget, and placed it on a secure and enviable
His own party was opposed to him in the question of the extension of slavery. The admission of California to statehood was the occasion. Shields' greatest speech entered into the debate. I quote a passage, showing not only his firmness of resolve with regard to the extension of slavery, but also his prophetic view of things to come, of things that are today: “Sir, they are laying the foundations of a great empire on the shores of the Pacific,—a mighty empire, an empire that at some future day will carry your flag, your commerce, your arts and your arms into Asia, and through China, Hindustan, and Persia, into Western Europe. Talk about carrying slavery there, of imposing such a blight upon that people, of withering their strength and paralyzing their energies by such an institution! No, Sir, such a thing was never intended by God, and will never be permitted by man.”
As to the perpetuation of the Union, his voice always rose loud amid the threats of secession, then thundering through senate and chamber,—always proclaiming that secession would be the blackest of crimes, the most stupid of follies, that never should America permit or endure it.
Always James Shields was the truest of patriots, the most earnest and loyal of Americans. Country was his idol. To country he gallantly sacrificed personal interest, dictate of party, hope and prospect of popular applause and approval. It is the undoubted and indubitable fact: From every office, of
But, whatever his other achievements, it is the field of war where James Shields is to be seen at his best. There his Celtic nature bursts forward in special efflorescence. Above all else he is the soldier. As the soldier, especially, we salute him, we honor him. All the virtues of the soldier are in him in plenary apportionment,—skill of strategy, firmness of disciplinary mastership, magic power of control of troops, undaunted courage, a dash in attack that bewilders, an endurance of pain and fatigue that secures victory when defeat is most threatening. The vanguard is always his coveted place, there brandishing his sword, compelling by sheer magnetism of example others to follow his lead. Wounded—he was wounded in almost every engagement—he still fights on, so long as strength to move remains. Compelled to retire, he frets like the caged lion, until again he has leaped into the saddle. Warriors of Napoleon, Ney, Murat, McDonald,—how fittingly Shields should have ridden with them! I must not tarry in details. Let praise from General Scott suffice. In his report of the battle of Cerro Gordo, the commander-in-chief wrote: “General Shields, a commander of activity, zeal and talent, is, I fear, if not dead, mortally wounded.” Later he said: “Shields' brigade, bravely assaulting the left, carried the rear battery (five guns) on the Islapa road, and added materially in the rout of the enemy.” And again: “The brigade so gallantly led by General Shields, and after his fall by Colonel Baker,deserves commendation for fine behavior and success.”
Scarcely convalescent, Shields is again on his charger in the march to the City of Mexico—always the undaunted soldier. In the battle of Contreras, “Shields,” said General Scott, “by the wise disposition of his brigade and gallant activity, contributed much to the general results. He held masses of cavalry and infantry, supported by artillery, in check below him, and captured hundreds, with one general (Mendoza) of those who fled from above.” “At Cherubusco,” I still quote General
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Came the great war,—the war for the salvation of the Union. Shields, a resident of California, bounded across the continent, joyous to be again a soldier. He was commissioned brigadier and assigned to the Shenandoah Valley. At Winchester he met Stonewall Jackson, fated there to meet under the blow of our own hero his only defeat. Shields again was wounded; much of the engagement he directed from his blood-stained cot, in the rear of his command; Colonel Kimball, who led the final charge, reported, after the victory, that in all details he carried out the plans and directions of his leader. Shields' division alone had confronted Jackson's much larger army, and had won the victory. If later, at Port Republic, Jackson did not receive another severe defeat, it was because orders given by General Shields to burn the bridge across Aquia Creek, for some unexplained reason, had not been obeyed. This is the testimony of General Oates, an officer under Stonewall Jackson, speaking at the unveiling of the Shields Statue in the Capitol at Washington: “Had General Shields' orders been obeyed, there was no escape for Jackson.” The orders obeyed, the bridge burnt, one of the most decisive victories of the War should have been gained by General Shields.
General Shields resigned from the army March 28, 1863. I take his act to have been a mistake. He and the Secretary of War, Mr. Stanton, were not in accord. Shields should have borne with patience Mr. Stanton's displeasure and gone forward in spite of temporary opposition, gone whither his merits bade him go, forward to greater victories and higher rewards. It was a mistake of his Celtic temperament, to which we must
General Shields is the soldier of three wars. He barely missed being the soldier of four wars. While a resident of Minnesota he heard of an Indian outbreak near the southern border line of the State. Quickly his appeal echoed through Faribault and Shieldsville; a troop of his Irish Colonists rallied around him, with whatever arms they could gather together. Soon General Shields and his braves were on the field of strife, but, alas for his expectation of that war, peace had already been proclaimed.
So, when building a monument to James Shields, we have built it to the soldier, General Shields. Have you done well, Companions of the Loyal Legion, Comrades of the Grand Army of the Republic, in setting up before the eyes of present and future generations, in Minnesota's Hall of Fame, the man who rushed to war, in defence of country's rights and country's honor? Most decidedly so. Peace is the ideal condition of human society,—all things, even war itself, must tend to peace; but God avert from America the ruin of its commonwealth, the plunder of its territory, the dishonor to its flag, from which war alone could have wrested it. Rather war, a hundred times, than evils such as those. Never do we know when menace may be nigh; never, consequently, must America's sons be void of the martial spirit, which bids America ever be free, ever secure, ever honored and respected. The names of our military heroes are safeguards of patriotism; their memories are perennial founts of its life and vigor.
Another factor in the career of General Shields was America itself. America gave to him inspiration and blessed his labor. America rewarded his merits.
General Shields was by birth an Irishman, by religion a Catholic. By lifelong and most loyal service, by the oft offered sacrifice of his blood, he was the American. Never did the Star-spangled Banner look down upon more sincere and braver patriotism than that which fired the heart and electrified the sword of General James Shields. America put faith in the plighted troth and the deeds of General Shields; accepted him
Now and then whispers pass through the air that men like to General Shields in birthplace and in religions belief are not the truest of Americans. Such whispers are the vilest of falsehoods. In contradiction, we evoke into speech the battlefields reddened by the armies of America, the lakes and oceans furrowed by its navies; we evoke into speech the monument erected this day, within the Capitol of Minnesota, to the name and the fame of General James Shields.
Back again, General Shields, to Minnesota, back with the memories of your services to Minnesota itself, with the glories in other states of the Union,—back with the triumphant flags of Cerro Cordo, and of Winchester,—back, the true and loyal son and servant of the Republic of the United States of America. Our Welcome—the welcome of our admiration and love—is yours.