he dictatorship of
the disciple of Washington, and in 1863, fighting without a leader,
without a centre, without arms, surprise the world with a heroism, a
self-sacrificing devotion, unexampled even in the history of their
former insurrections? Who has never heard of Russian batteries assaulted
and carried by Polish scythes? Whose bosom is so devoid of the divine
cords of justice and sympathy as never yet to have revibrated the strain
of the Polish exiles: POLAND IS NOT YET LOST?

Alas, the chronological dates just touched upon embrace a century! For a
hundred years Poland writhes in heroic despair under the heels of
Muscovite despotism, dazzles mankind by sublime efforts to recover her
right to national life, liberty, and happiness, and _not a hand has been
stretched out to help her break her chains_! All her martyrdom wrests
from the better nature of mankind is a tear of mourning, when, after a
superhuman struggle, she again sinks exhausted, and is believed to sink
into the grave. And has Poland well deserved this heartless
indifference, this pitilessness of the nations? Has she delivered none?
aided none? served none? defended none? Answer, Vienna, rescued from the
Turkish yoke by John Sobieski! Answer, thou monument at West Point, thou
fort at the mouth of the Savannah, ye towns and counties named
Kosciuszko and Pulaski! Answer, Elba and St. Helena! Answer, Hungarian
companion-in-arms of Bern, Dembinski, and Wysocki! Answer, Germany,
Europe, Christendom, for centuries shielded by Polish valor against
Tartar barbarism and Moslem fanaticism!

Alas, Poland must beg even for sympathy! That gathering, which
commemorated, on its thirty-third anniversary, the outbreak of the
rising of 1830, was destined to resuscitate the feeling of the American
people for the Polish cause. For the Poles sojourning in this country
had reasons to believe that even that passive sentiment was on the wane,
that interests, not less illusory than selfish, were working to destroy
even the impressions which sacred national remembrances, by twining
together the memories of Washington and Kosciuszko, had created in the
American heart. Strange to say, amid the roar of cannon thundering
freedom to slaves, amid streams of blood shed in the name of
nationality, on this side of the Atlantic, amid daily echoes
reverberating the groans of butchered martyrs, of mothers and sisters
scourged, hanged, or dragged into captivity, on the other side--New York
ha