ABSTRACT
In Memorial Day Address in 1884, Holmes links the state's Puritan past to the Crusades, and attempts to establish a deep historical lineage for the national impulse toward democratic freedom in the United States. Holmes' tendency, which arguably developed during the Civil War and which would become increasingly evident as Holmes grew older, not just to see his own life as a battle but to locate the larger story of his state and his nation within a martial narrative. Two hundred and fifty years ago a few devout men founded the First Church of Cambridge. Holmes fought his battles, returned, died among his friends, and his effigy, cut in alabaster or cast in bronze, was set upon his tomb in the Temple or the Abbey. While Holmes lived, hundreds as good as he fell beneath the walls of Ascalon, or sank in the sands of the desert and was forgotten.
