To James Madison from Ebenezer Breed, August 1814
From Ebenezer Breed
Nahant, Augt. 1814
To James Madison Esqr President of the U. States
And
E Gerry Esqr: Vice President of the U States,
With a claw of an American Eagle taken on Nahant and presented by, and as a token of the high consideration and esteem with which I am their sincere friend
Ebenr Breed1
Inhabitant wild, of Our mountainous earth,
May the dark crag be sacred that gave thee thy birth;
Let the hunter far distant from thy beacon roam
Nor tread nigh the spot Nature gives as thy home
We claim thee, We own thee—thou bold mountaineer,
Yet quit for a moment thy Station so drear,
Thou’rt our National Standard, our first dearest pride,
Beneath which our brave Warriors in thousands have died.
Leave thy desert, and heither thy swift course direct
The couragious inspire, and the timid protect.
Lead us on to the charge, and in mounting on high
Lift our National Glory with thee to the Sky
We trust our bold Eagle, e’er ready for fight,
Should the Lion ferocious bear hard on our right
And demanding Submission hold out his proud paw
Will, instead of a tribute, present him a Claw.
‘Tis the Sterne grasp of Virtue th’ effort to retain
What our Ancestors desperately Struggl’d to gain
Then We Surely can never be other than free
While led on lov’d Eagle by Heaven & thee
S B
RC (ViU: Madison Family Papers, 1768–1866, Special Collections).
1. Ebenezer Breed (1766–1839) was born into a Quaker family in Lynn, Massachusetts. As a young man he became a central figure in the fledgling Lynn shoe manufacturing industry, traveling extensively in the United States and England to procure raw materials and develop shoe markets. He successfully lobbied the first Federal Congress for a protective duty on shoes, and may have had contact with JM through mutual Quaker acquaintances in Philadelphia. By the time of this letter, however, he had suffered reverses and returned to Lynn, where he made shoes, eventually began to wander the streets in a disreputable condition, and died in the almshouse (Paul G. Faler, Mechanics and Manufacturers in the Early Industrial Revolution: Lynn, Massachusetts, 1780–1860 [Albany, 1981], 13–16; Alan Dawley, Class and Community: The Industrial Revolution in Lynn [Cambridge, Mass., 1976], 22–23).