{"id":"01KG8AMA7M0JDWHS1Z59F6PVJP","cid":"bafkreiapswwgqcz2ip2n6ckw5olmm23h5kg4n3oi3pguclvlodmhzrldda","type":"chunk","properties":{"end_line":12083,"extracted_at":"2026-01-30T20:48:26.985Z","extracted_by":"structure-extraction-lambda","label":"Chunk 1","source_file":"01KG89J1FFTGRE9J93Z3K29NGY","start_line":12034,"text":"                  MAJOR GENTIAN AND COLONEL J. BUNKUM\r\n\r\n\r\n... As witness this long newspaper clipping without caption inserted in\r\nsomebody’s scrap-book.\r\n\r\n‘Note that badge Major Gentian wears upon occasion. It is a military\r\nbadge. It is the badge of the national brotherhood of veterans in whose\r\nChapters the grade of the field is ignored, and the general salutes the\r\nprivate--comrade! Is Major Gentian’s badge this badge?’ touching a\r\nbronze button on his lapel. ‘Is it the badge of the Grand Army of the\r\nRepublic? No, men and brethren, it is another sort of badge. A badge\r\nwhich by the original constitution of the order it symbolises was\r\nrestricted to the officers of the Army of the Revolution, to them, and\r\nin primogeniture to their descendants. I remember long ago in my youth\r\nthe eldest son of a revolutionary officer, and as such an inheritor of\r\nthe Cincinnati badge, saying, over the Madeira, to his own son, then a\r\nstripling, “My boy, if ever there is a recognised order of nobility in\r\nthis land, it will be formed of the sons of the officers of the\r\nRevolution.” What a frank letting-out was that--thanks to the old\r\nMadeira--of the spirit animating the Cincinnati in the second\r\ngeneration, even as in the first. And to the Cincinnati Major Gentian\r\nbelongs; and he prides himself upon it; and his pride here makes him\r\nthrow back his shoulders, old man though he be--yea, and lends an inch\r\nto his stature.\r\n\r\n‘Now, gratefully and very fervently do we hold in reverence the memory\r\nof the heroes of Seventy-six. Yet who but they founded this order? Did\r\nJohn Hancock withstand King George’s tea-tax in the spirit of John\r\nHampden resisting King Charles’s impost of ship-money? Yes, so; but only\r\nso. Unto John Hancock the rich merchant, no more than to John Hampden\r\nthe rich country gentleman of a prior generation, had any practical\r\npurpose revealed the gospel of man’s unconditioned equality. Urge not\r\nagainst this aught in the Declaration of Independence. For when the\r\npassage “All men are born free and equal,” when that passage was being\r\nwritten were not some of the signers legalised owners of slaves?\r\n\r\n‘Too evident is it that in throwing off the British plush, the men of\r\nSeventy-six did not shed the colonial skin. In divers respects, social\r\nand political, they remained loyal to British tradition, though\r\njustified rebels to the British crown. Assuredly no, in the\r\ncharacterising significance of the word as now current, they can hardly\r\nbe considered _Americans_. It is we, their posterity, that are\r\nAmericans--we, the people, the sovereign American people, who from\r\nEnglish and European colonists have in process of time, and under the\r\nspecial guidance of God, developed into _Americans_. And in view of all\r\nthis, does not Major Gentian’s Society, the Society of the Cincinnati,\r\nlag among us as much out of place as would the old Spanish Order of the\r\nKnights of the Holy Ghost.\r\n\r","title":"Chunk 1"},"relationships":[{"peer":"01KG8AJWBZRD2MPNQT3HJP2PQE","peer_type":"segment","predicate":"in"},{"peer":"01KG89J1FFTGRE9J93Z3K29NGY","peer_type":"file","predicate":"extractedFrom"},{"peer":"01KG89HMDZKNY753EZE1CJ8HZW","peer_type":"collection","predicate":"collection"},{"peer":"01KG8AM4M5RTPT4F98TZS59Y99","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"next"}],"ver":2,"created_at":"2026-01-30T20:48:33.012Z","ts":"2026-01-30T20:48:46.108Z","edited_by":{"method":"manual","user_id":"01KFF0H3YRP9ZSM033AM0QJ47H"}}