Eulogy Upon The Life And Public Services Of Gen Winfield Scott

Author : Frank H. Norton
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9781331030164
Total Pages : 38 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (31 download)

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Download or read book Life and Public Services of Winfield Scott Hancock (Classic Reprint) written by Frank H. Norton and published by . This book was released on 2015-07-09 with total page 38 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Excerpt from Life and Public Services of Winfield Scott Hancock While it is impossible, in the brief space of a pamphlet sketch, to do justice to such a subject as the life of Major-General Hancock, it is hoped by the writer that the present effort will at least place him favorably before those who peruse it. Very slight examination of its pages will show that, in each of the important stations which he has filled, General Hancock has - as a distinguished brother general has expressed it - improved upon his position. Meanwhile, he is in the prime of life and of his faculties, and it may well be that he shall yet give even more valuable service to his country than during the past of his most eventful career. Part I. The Boy - The Cadet - The Soldier. War, the most destructive, is also the most beneficent of forces. It annihilates to recreate. It opens the way for new men and endows them with new powers. Besides soldiers, it brings poets, lawgivers, and statesmen to the surface. It gave to America a Washington and a Lincoln; and finally, to its solemn influence we owe two men, bearing the same name, divided by a century of time, whose meaning and purpose in our history are best signified by the two words - construction and reconstruction. Birth And Ancestry. Winfield Scott Hancock, the hero of this story, was born February 14 (St. Valentine's day), in the year 1824, in a small village of Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, called Montgomery Square, twelve miles east of Norristown, and between that village and Doylestown, the county seat of Bucks. Of the early ancestry of Hancock we know little. Attempts are being made at present beyond the ocean to trace this to the earliest times. Back as far as the year 1400, the family is found, spelling its name variously, and occupying the position of merchant traders between Bristol, England, and various parts of Ireland. The connection between the Pennsylvania branch of the family and John Hancock, of Massachusetts Bay, is not defined. As the name is not, however, a common one, it is not unreasonable to suppose that some remote relationship united all branches of the family. But it is with the Pennsylvania branch that we have now to do, and before this narrative shall be concluded, it will perhaps be shown that our hero might well be esteemed the first of his family, by reason of the many noble qualifications and estimable qualities he has displayed, and for the rounded perfection of a nature seldom equaled in excellence and majesty. Yet there was not wanting opportunity for the inheritance of the characteristics which have gone to the making up of General Hancock's character. His father, Benjamin F. Hancock, of Norristown, was a teacher in high repute, who always interested himself in the progress of education; later, a lawyer of standing and position, recognized as a man of much capacity and broad views; and at all times a gentleman of perfect integrity and high intelligence. The grandfather of General Hancock was a mariner who, when quite young, was with others captured at sea by the British, and for some time incarcerated in one of the English prisons. General Hancock's mother, Elizabeth Hawksworth, was a prudent. Christian woman, whose father was a Revolutionary soldier, whose uncle was an officer in the War of 1812, and whose grandfather was a soldier in the old French and Indian War, and captain in the American patriotic army, who died in camp in 1777. Thus it will be seen that the stock was good, and the blood true blue. The section of country inhabited by the Hancocks and the Hawksworths for more than a century, is not only one of the most beautiful parts of Pennsylvania, but it is a region teeming with historic memories. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com