RESPONSE OF MR. BARNES.

Mr. Chairman:

For unknown cycles of years, before any white man settled in the county of Onondaga, there lived and ruled over these pleasant hills and lovely valleys, those celebrated tribes of Indians known as the Confederate, or United Five Nations. These Romans of the New World had subjected to their sway most of the other tribes from the Hudson to the Mississippi rivers, and from the Carolina's to the Great Lakes. The hills of Onondaga formed the grand Council Chamber, where their dusky Senators convened and counselled, and where the painted Chiefs and Warriors planned their far-reaching campaigns. This soil was classic in the annals of tradition, reaching back to an era of which the memory of man knows not the beginning. The advance of the white man, from the time of King Phillip's war in the east to the present Indian warfare raging on the outskirts of our civilization in the west, has been but an ever repeated history of the yielding of the native red man to the Anglo-Saxon race.

This is not the time or the occasion for Aboriginal enquiry or discussion-but at this glorious re-union at the household shrines of our fathers, we cannot fail to remember the sadly eloquent sentiment which runs, like a minor chord, through all the speeches of their orators, and seems to have nerved the Savage arm in almost every Indian conflict that has occurred on this continent-"You ask us to leave the homes of our ancestors; you are attempting to drive us from the graves of our Fathers!"

To this sentiment, certainly every human heart assembled here to-day can thrill. We all feel that we are treading today a soil consecrated to us, also, as the chosen home of our fathers, and which contains within its bosom all that of them is earthly. I am proud to say that in your quiet churchyard at the base of Pompey Hill, I have a grandfather and grandmother quietly reposing. My grandfather, Deacon William Barnes, emigrated from Great Barrington, Mass.,

to Otsego County, N. Y., and from thence in 1798, to a farm about one mile south of the village of Oran. In the immediate neighborhood three of his brothers, Phineas, Roswell and Asa Barnes, had previously settled. My grandfather was a farmer, and had upon his farm a small blacksmith shop, as it was not unusual in those days for the farmer to understand and practice, occasionally, some mechanical trade. Animated by that stern monitor necessity, as well as by the promptings of his Puritan blood, he painted in conspicuous letters, first above his forge, the motto which was the guide of his life, "Work or Die," and alternating between the two pursuits of blacksmith and farmer, laying down the ponderous hammer. only to assume the equally severe labor of felling primeval trees four or five feet in diameter, and guiding his oxen through virgin acres, where the stumps impeded every onward step-his life stands as the representative of the lives of nearly all those early settlers in Pompey, whose memory we revere to-day.

These early settlers were mostly God-fearing New Englanders of Puritan origin, and fervently inspired with religious zeal and enthsiasm. In my grandfather's house, no secular book or newspaper could be read upon the Sabbath day, the sacredness of which was kept with punctillious rigidity. An amusing incident has been recently related to me by one of the parties, still living, and now in his eightysixth year, (Mr. Luther Buell of this town.) In the early part of the present century he was working for my grandfather, and one Sunday afternoon, being sent to drive up the cows from the woods to be milked, a young deer was found with the herd, and by quiet and shrewed management was driven up also to the barn yard with the domestic cattle. Young Buell, much elated at the prospect of a fine haunch of venison, hastened into the house to notify my grandfather of his prize, but alas! for the impatient Nimrod-the sun had not yet set in the west, and the sacred day could not be profaned by secular pursuits-venison or no venison, no gun could be discharged on those premises, and the young man

was compelled to watch and stealthily guard his game until the sun had fairly sunk below the horizon, and the New England Sabbath had terminated. Then the deer was duly shot, and my grandfather's conscience preserved inviolate.

Our present generation have little conception of the herculean task lying in the pathway of the early pioneers of Central New York. It was no small undertaking to travel through dense forests in search of the military lot which the settler had purchased from the soldier of the Revolution, by whom it had been drawn as a reward for military services during the war. Once upon his lot, (perhaps a dozen or more miles from a Doctor, a neighbor or grist-mill,) he was confronted not alone by wild beasts and Indians, but by the no less stern realities of a primeval forest out of which he must by his strong arm alone, create and build up a Christian home. What was to be done? Wife and children were there, needing food and shelter; sometimes in addition, a mortgage upon the lot with a no less ravenous appetite for interest on each recurring anniversary of the purchase. We read of heroism on the field of battle, where frantic men rush on to death, nerved by the maddening stimulus of martial music and the cannons roar, but here in the solitary wilderness was no flag flaunting in the breeze, no flying artillery, no support from other thousands of sympathetic hearts throbbing in unison, no pensions, no honors, no promotions, no glory, no immortality. No; none of these-here were only the wife and children, born and yet to be born, two strong stalwart arms, and a loving, honest and manly heart, intent only on serving God and performing its duty here on earth.

The sturdy faith which led these men into the wilderness, did not desert them when they faced its dangers, and the settlers axe soon resounded through its majestic solitudes. One by one the stalwart monarchs of the forest were laid low, until the sunlight crept coyly into the modest "clearing,' and laughed with the wife and children, as the open space was consecrated to the Lares and Penates of the Christian home. Those days were not without their sunshine. Did

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you ever hear of the tender friendships and hearty hand-grips of those early pioneers? If not, watch closely when you see any of the survivors casually meet. The whole combined energy of Fifth Avenue," could not concentrate as much soul and electricity as was generated in one "barn-raising,' or town-meeting. And then the midnight fires when the log-heaps were lighted in the dry season of June; no costly illuminations in the N. Y. Parks, in Paris, or in London, could equal the quiet joy of the farmer at the ever-changing pyrotechnics of the "fallow" and "log-heap." And then for the children; could Delmonico with all his art furnish a dish equal to fresh warm maple sugar to be eaten on the pure and unsullied snow of the vernal equinox ?

And after churches were erected, what holy joy welcomed the quiet Sabbath, the day of peace and rest, and how soulsatisfying the sermons of those pioneer clergyman, teaching their earnest hearers to look "from Nature up to Nature's God."

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The church was often a Log-House or Barn, but it mattered little to the true Christians there assembled. The fervent prayers and aspirations that arose to Heaven from those humble walls, let us devoutly believe were as acceptable to God as the anthems of Westminster, or the formalisms of Ecumenical Councils, convened in the broad aisles. of St. Peters, at Rome.

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In this stern conflict year after year, with poverty and want, many noble men and martyred women died a premature death, over borne by their excessive burthens. mass, however, came out victorious, the mortgages were gradually satisfied, comforts and conveniences were added to the household, from year to year, while numerous stalwart sons and handsome daughters joined hands with them in the crusade of labor, until the earth began generously to reward the faithful husbandman, and the wilderness blossomed as the rose.

I have been asked to-day to respond to a sentiment hon

oring the memory of these men-how can I speak of them, without laying also my tribute of grateful reverence upon the graves of the honored mothers and grand-mothers of these early days, who with scanty means literally created the food and clothing for their families, and trained and taught us, their children, with all the fidelity and devotion of guardian angels. Many of them had disciplined intellects which were stimulated and fed only at the fount of classic English literature, and in the intervals of their daily toil, they were often able to talk with you more critically, and quote more freely from the Spectator, from Pope, Addison and the earlier poets than would be possible for many of the so-called literary women of to-day, while they gave to Humanity and to the State, not merely one or two feeble and dyspeptic offsprings, but well-endowed, fully perfected children, (sometimes numbering more than a dozen,) and all nursed at their own bosoms, and trained to manhood and womanhood, in the fear and admonition of the Lord.

My revered Father, Orson Barnes, (with whose name many of you are familiar, although he has been dead for twenty years,) having removed from this neighborhood during my childhood, I had few opportunities to become acquainted with your older citizens. As a law-student, I well recollect the Websterian brow of DANIEL GOTT, and the able, honest and cheerful face of VICTORY BIRDSEYE. They belonged to that honored class of lawyers, not yet I trust, entirely extinct, who performed their professional duties with all the honesty, zeal and conscientiousness of ministers of the gospel. I well recollect when studying law in Baldwinsville, with the late lamented Judge Geo. A. Stansbury, walking twelve miles, day after day, to the Court House, at Salina, to hear such lawyers as Noxon, Lawrence, Hillis, Gott and Birdseye, and feeling amply repaid for the physical fatigue.

Among the many men of mark, who have been born in the town of Pompey, and who I see around me to day, I miss one face that should have lent its geniality and charm