Chapter X: Act IV (4)

I do not stand up in this presence to indulge in any mock sentimentality. You brave men who wore the gray would be the first to hold me or any other son of the North in just contempt if I should say that, now it was all over, I thought the North was wrong and the result of the war a mistake, and that I was prepared to suppress my political opinions. I believe most profoundly that the war on our side was eternally right, that our victory was the salvation of the country, and that the results of the war were of infinite benefit to both North and South. But however we differed, or still differ, as to the causes for which we fought then, we accept them as settled, commit them to history, and fight over them no more. To the men who fought the battles of the Confederacy we hold out our hands freely, frankly, and gladly. To courage and faith wherever shown we bow in homage with uncovered heads. We respect and honor the gallantry and valor of the brave men who fought against us, and who gave their lives and shed their blood in defense of what they believed to be right. We rejoice that the famous general whose name is borne upon your banner was one of the greatest soldiers of modern times, because he, too, was an American. We have no bitter memories to revive, no reproaches to utter. Reconciliation is not to be sought, because it exists already. Differ in politics and in a thousand other ways we must and shall in all good nature, but let us never differ with each other on sectional or State lines, by race or creed.

We welcome you, soldiers of Virginia, as others more eloquent than I have said, to New England. We welcome you to old Massachusetts. We welcome you to Boston and to Faneuil Hall. In your presence here, and at the sound of your voices beneath this historic roof, the years roll back and we see the figure and hear again the ringing tones of your great orator, Patrick Henry, declaring to the first Continental Congress, "The distinctions between Virginians, Pennsylvanians, New Yorkers, and New Englanders are no more. I am not a Virginian, but an American." A distinguished Frenchman, as he stood among the graves at Arlington, said "Only a great people is capable of a great civil war." Let us add with thankful hearts that only a great people is capable of a great reconciliation. Side by side, Virginia and Massachusetts led the colonies into the War for Independence. Side by side they founded the government of the United States. Morgan and Greene, Lee and Knox, Moultrie and Prescott, men of the South and men of the North, fought shoulder to shoulder, and wore the same uniform of buff and blue--the uniform of Washington.

Your presence here brings back their noble memories, it breathes the spirit of concord, and united with so many other voices in the irrevocable message of union and good will. Mere sentiment all this, some may say. But it is sentiment, true sentiment, that has moved the world. Sentiment fought the war, and sentiment has reunited us. When the war closed, it was proposed in the newspapers and elsewhere to give Governor Andrew, who had sacrificed health and strength and property in his public duties, some immediately lucrative office, like the collectorship of the port of Boston. A friend asked him if he would take such a place. "No," said he; "I have stood as high priest between the horns of the altar, and I have poured out upon it the best blood of Massachusetts, and I cannot take money for that." Mere sentiment, truly, but the sentiment which ennobles and uplifts mankind. It is sentiment which so hallows a bit of torn, stained bunting, that men go gladly to their deaths to save it. So I say that the sentiment manifested by your presence here, brethren of Virginia, sitting side by side with those who wore the blue, has a far-reaching and gracious influence, of more value than many practical things. It tells us that these two grand old commonwealths, parted in the shock of the Civil War, are once more side by side as in the days of the Revolution, never to part again. It tells us that the sons of Virginia and Massachusetts, if war should break again upon the country, will, as in the olden days, stand once more shoulder to shoulder, with no distinction in the colors that they wear. It is fraught with tidings of peace on earth and you may read its meaning in the words on yonder picture, "Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable."

A REMINISCENCE OF GETTYSBURG

The following extract is taken from General John B. Gordon's great
lecture, "The Last Days of the Confederacy," delivered with marked
effect throughout the country. This report of the lecture is as
given in Brooklyn, N. Y., February 7, 1901.

But now to Gettysburg. That great battle could not be described in the space of a lecture. I shall select from the myriad of thrilling incidents which rush over my memory but two.[6] The first I relate because it seems due to one of the bravest and knightliest soldiers of the Union army. As my command came back from the Susquehanna River to Gettysburg, it was thrown squarely on the right flank of the Union army. The fact that that portion of the Union army melted was no disparagement either of its courage or its lofty American manhood, for any troops that had ever been marshaled, the Old Guard itself, would have been as surely and swiftly shattered. It was that movement that gave to the Confederate army the first day's victory at Gettysburg; and as I rode forward over that field of green clover, made red with the blood of both armies, I found a major-general among the dead and the dying. But a few moments before, I had seen the proud form of that magnificent Union officer reel in the saddle and then fall in the white smoke of the battle; and as I rode by, intensely looking into his pale face, which was turned to the broiling rays of that scorching July sun, I discovered that he was not dead. Dismounting from my horse, I lifted his head with one hand, gave him water from my canteen, inquired his name and if he was badly hurt. He was General Francis C. Barlow, of New York. He had been shot from his horse while grandly leading a charge. The ball had struck him in front, passed through the body and out near the spinal cord, completely paralyzing him in every limb; neither he nor I supposed he could live for one hour. I desired to remove him before death from that terrific sun. I had him lifted on a litter and borne to the shade in the rear. As he bade me good-bye, and upon my inquiry what I could do for him, he asked me to take from his pocket a bunch of letters. Those letters were from his wife, and as I opened one at his request, and as his eye caught, as he supposed for the last time, that wife's signature, the great tears came like a fountain and rolled down his pale face; and he said to me, "General Gordon, you are a Confederate; I am a Union soldier; but we are both Americans; if you should live through this dreadful war and ever see my wife, will you not do me the kindness to tell my wife for me that you saw me on this field? Tell her for me, that my last thought on earth was of her; tell her for me that you saw me fall in this battle, and that her husband fell, not in the rear, but at the head of his column; tell her for me, general, that I freely give my life to my country, but that my unutterable grief is that I must now go without the privilege of seeing her once more, and bidding her a long and loving farewell." I at once said: "Where is Mrs. Barlow, general? Where could I find her?" for I was determined that wife should receive that gallant husband's message. He replied: "She is very close to me; she is just back of the Union line of battle with the commander-in-chief at his headquarters." That announcement of Mrs. Barlow's presence with the Union army struck in this heart of mine another chord of deepest and tenderest sympathy; for my wife had followed me, sharing with me the privations of the camp, the fatigues of the march; again and again was she under fire, and always on the very verge of the battle was that devoted wife of mine, like an angel of protection and an inspiration to duty. I replied: "Of course, General Barlow, if I am alive, sir, when this day's battle, now in progress is ended--if I am not shot dead before the night comes--you may die satisfied that I will see to it that Mrs. Barlow has your message before to-morrow's dawn."

And I did. The moment the guns had ceased their roar on the hills, I sent a flag of truce with a note to Mrs. Barlow. I did not tell her--I did not have the heart to tell her that her husband was dead, as I believed him to be; but I did tell her that he was desperately wounded, a prisoner in my hands; but that she should have safe escort through my lines to her husband's side. Late that night, as I lay in the open field upon my saddle, a picket from my front announced a lady on the line. She was Mrs. Barlow. She had received my note and was struggling, under the guidance of officers of the Union army, to penetrate my lines and reach her husband's side. She was guided to his side by my staff during the night. Early next morning the battle was renewed, and the following day, and then came the retreat of Lee's immortal army. I thought no more of that gallant son of the North, General Barlow, except to count him among the thousands of Americans who had gone down on both sides in the dreadful battle. Strangely enough, as the war progressed, Barlow concluded not to die; Providence decreed that he should live. He recovered and rejoined his command; and just one year after that, Barlow saw that I was killed in another battle. The explanation is perfectly simple. A cousin of mine, with the same initials, General J. B. Gordon, of North Carolina, was killed in a battle near Richmond. Barlow, who, as I say, had recovered and rejoined his command--although I knew he was dead, or thought I did--picked up a newspaper and read this item in it: "General J. B. Gordon of the Confederate army was killed to-day in battle." Calling his staff around him, Barlow read that item and said to them, "I am very sorry to see this; you will remember that General J. B. Gordon was the officer who picked me up on the battlefield at Gettysburg, and sent my wife through his lines to me at night. I am very sorry."

Fifteen years passed. Now, I wish the audience to remember that during all those fifteen years which intervened, Barlow was dead to me, and for fourteen of them I was dead to Barlow. In the meantime, the partiality of the people of Georgia had placed me in the United States senate. Clarkson Potter was a member of Congress from New York. He invited me to dine with him to meet his friend, General Barlow. Now came my time to think. "Barlow," I said, "Barlow? That is the same name, but it can't be my Barlow, for I left him dead at Gettysburg." And I endeavored to understand what it meant, and thought I had made the discovery. I was told, as I made the inquiry, that there were two Barlows in the United States army. That satisfied me at once. I concluded, as a matter of course, that it was the other fellow I was going to meet; that Clarkson Potter had invited me to dine with the living Barlow and not with the dead one. Barlow had a similar reflection about the Gordon he was to dine with. He supposed that I was the other Gordon. We met at Clarkson Potter's table. I sat just opposite to Barlow; and in the lull of the conversation I asked him, "General, are you related to the Barlow who was killed at Gettysburg?" He replied: "I am the man, sir." "Are you related," he asked, "to the Gordon who killed me?" "Well," I said, "I am the man, sir." The scene which followed beggars all description. No language could describe that scene at Clarkson Potter's table in Washington, fifteen years after the war was over. Truth is indeed stranger than fiction. Think of it! What could be stranger? There we met, both dead, each of us presenting to the other the most absolute proof of the resurrection of the dead.

But stranger still, perhaps, is the friendship true and lasting begun under such auspices. What could be further removed from the realms of probabilities than a confiding friendship between combatants, which is born on the field of blood, amidst the thunders of battle, and while the hostile legions rush upon each other with deadly fury and pour into each other's breasts their volleys of fire and of leaden hail. Such were the circumstances under which was born the friendship between Barlow and myself, and which I believe is more sincere because of its remarkable birth, and which has strengthened and deepened with the passing years. For the sake of our reunited and glorious Republic may we not hope that similar ties will bind together all the soldiers of the two armies--indeed all Americans in perpetual unity until the last bugle call shall have summoned us to the eternal camping grounds beyond the stars?

THE NEW SOUTH

Address by Henry W. Grady, journalist [born in Athens, Ga., May 17,
1851; died in Atlanta, Ga., December 23, 1889], delivered at the
eighty-first anniversary celebration of the New England Society in
the city of New York, December 22, 1886.

MR. PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN:--"There was a South of slavery and secession--that South is dead. There is a South of union and freedom--that South, thank God, is living, breathing, growing every hour." These words, delivered from the immortal lips of Benjamin H. Hill, at Tammany Hall in 1866, true then, and truer now, I shall make my text to-night.

Let me express to you my appreciation of the kindness by which I am permitted to address you. I make this abrupt acknowledgment advisedly, for I feel that if, when I raise my provincial voice in this ancient and august presence, I could find courage for no more than the opening sentence, it would be well if, in that sentence, I had met in a rough sense my obligation as a guest, and had perished, so to speak, with courtesy on my lips and grace in my heart. Permitted through your kindness to catch my second wind, let me say that I appreciate the significance of being the first Southerner to speak at this board, which bears the substance, if it surpasses the semblance, of original New England hospitality and honors a sentiment that in turn honors you, but in which my personality is lost, and the compliment to my people made plain.

I bespeak the utmost stretch of your courtesy to-night. I am not troubled about those from whom I come. You remember the man whose wife sent him to a neighbor with a pitcher of milk, and who, tripping on the top step, fell, with such casual interruptions as the landing afforded, into the basement; and while picking himself up had the pleasure of hearing his wife call out: "John, did you break the pitcher?" "No, I didn't," said John, "but I be dinged if I don't!"

So, while those who call to me from behind may inspire me with energy if not with courage, I ask an indulgent hearing from you. I beg that you will bring your full faith in American fairness and frankness to judgment upon what I shall say. There was an old preacher once who told some boys of the Bible lesson he was going to read in the morning. The boys finding the place, glued together the connecting pages. The next morning he read on the bottom of one page: "When Noah was one hundred and twenty years old he took unto himself a wife, who was"--then turning the page--"one hundred and forty cubits long, forty cubits wide, built of gopher wood, and covered with pitch inside and out." He was naturally puzzled at this. He read it again, verified it, and then said: "My friends, this is the first time I ever met this in the Bible, but I accept it as an evidence of the assertion that we are fearfully and wonderfully made." If I could get you to hold such faith to-night I could proceed cheerfully to the task I otherwise approach with a sense of consecration.

Pardon me one word, Mr. President, spoken for the sole purpose of getting into the volumes that go out annually freighted with the rich eloquence of your speakers--the fact that the Cavalier as well as the Puritan was on the continent in its early days, and that he was "up and able to be about." I have read your books carefully and I find no mention of that fact, which seems to me an important one for preserving a sort of historical equilibrium if for nothing else. Let me remind you the Virginia Cavalier first challenged France on this continent--that Cavalier John Smith gave New England its very name, and was so pleased with the job that he has been handing his own name around ever since--and that while Miles Standish was cutting off men's ears for courting a girl without her parents' consent, and forbade men to kiss their wives on Sunday, the Cavalier was courting everything in sight, and that the Almighty had vouchsafed great increase to the Cavalier colonies, the huts in the wilderness being full as the nests in the woods.

But having incorporated the Cavalier as a fact in your charming little books I shall let him work out his own salvation, as he has always done with engaging gallantry, and we will hold no controversy as to his merits. Why should we? Neither Puritan nor Cavalier long survived as such. The virtues and traditions of both happily still live for the inspiration of their sons and the saving of the old fashion. But both Puritan and Cavalier were lost in the storm of the first Revolution; and the American citizen, supplanting both and stronger than either, took possession of the Republic bought by their common blood and fashioned to wisdom, and charged himself with teaching men government and establishing the voice of the people as the voice of God.

My friend, Dr. Talmage has told you that the typical American has yet to come. Let me tell you that he has already come. Great types like valuable plants are slow to flower and fruit. But from the union of these colonies Puritans and Cavaliers, from the straightening of their purposes and the crossing of their blood, slow perfecting through a century, came he who stands as the first typical American, the first who comprehended within himself all the strength and gentleness, all the majesty and grace of this Republic--Abraham Lincoln. He was the son of Puritan and Cavalier, for in his ardent nature were fused the virtues of both, and in the depths of his great soul the faults of both were lost. He was greater than Puritan, greater than Cavalier, in that he was American renewed, and that in his homely form were first gathered the vast and thrilling forces of his ideal government--charging it with such tremendous meaning and so elevating it above human suffering that martyrdom, though infamously aimed, came as a fitting crown to a life consecrated from the cradle to human liberty. Let us, each cherishing the traditions and honoring his fathers, build with reverent hands to the type of this simple but sublime life, in which all types are honored; and in our common glory as Americans there will be plenty and to spare for your forefathers and for mine.

In speaking to the toast with which you have honored me. I accent the term, "The New South," as in no sense disparaging to the Old. Dear to me, sir, is the home of my childhood and the traditions of my people. I would not, if I could, dim the glory they won in peace and war, or by word or deed take aught from the splendor and grace of their civilization--never equaled and, perhaps, never to be equaled in its chivalric strength and grace. There is a New South, not through protest against the Old, but because of new conditions, new adjustments and, if you please, new ideas and aspirations. It is to this that I address myself, and to the consideration of which I hasten lest it become the Old South before I get to it. Age does not endow all things with strength and virtue, nor are all new things to be despised. The shoemaker who put over his door "John Smith's shop. Founded in 1760," was more than matched by his young rival across the street who hung out this sign: "Bill Jones. Established 1886. No old stock kept in this shop."

Dr. Talmage has drawn for you, with a master's hand, the picture of your returning armies. He has told you how, in the pomp and circumstance of war, they came back to you, marching with proud and victorious tread, reading their glory in a nation's eyes! Will you bear with me while I tell you of another army that sought its home at the close of the late war--an army that marched home in defeat and not in victory--in pathos and not in splendor, but in glory that equalled yours, and to hearts as loving as ever welcomed heroes home. Let me picture to you the footsore Confederate soldier, as, buttoning up in his faded gray jacket the parole which was to bear testimony to his children of his fidelity and faith, he turned his face southward from Appomattox in April, 1865. Think of him as ragged, half-starved, heavy-hearted, enfeebled by want and wounds; having fought to exhaustion, he surrenders his gun, wrings the hands of his comrades in silence, and lifting his tear-stained and pallid face for the last time to the graves that dot the old Virginia hills, pulls his gray cap over his brow and begins the slow and painful journey. What does he find--let me ask you, who went to your homes eager to find in the welcome you had justly earned, full payment for four years' sacrifice--what does he find when, having followed the battle-stained cross against overwhelming odds, dreading death not half so much as surrender, he reaches the home he left so prosperous and beautiful? He finds his house in ruins, his farm devastated, his slaves free, his stock killed, his barns empty, his trade destroyed, his money worthless; his social system, feudal in its magnificence, swept away; his people without law or legal status, his comrades slain, and the burdens of others heavy on his shoulders. Crushed by defeat, his very traditions are gone; without money, credit, employment, material or training; and besides all this, confronted with the gravest problem that ever met human intelligence--the establishing of a status for the vast body of his liberated slaves.

What does he do--this hero in gray with a heart of gold? Does he sit down in sullenness and despair? Not for a day. Surely God, who had stripped him of his prosperity, inspired him in his adversity. As ruin was never before so overwhelming, never was restoration swifter. The soldier stepped from the trenches into the furrow; horses that had charged Federal guns marched before the plow, and fields that ran red with human blood in April were green with the harvest in June; women reared in luxury cut up their dresses and made breeches for their husbands, and, with a patience and heroism that fit women always as a garment, gave their hands to work. There was little bitterness in all this. Cheerfulness and frankness prevailed. "Bill Arp" struck the keynote when he said: "Well, I killed as many of them as they did of me, and now I am going to work." Or the soldier returning home after defeat and roasting some corn on the roadside, who made the remark to his comrades: "You may leave the South if you want to, but I am going to Sandersville, kiss my wife and raise a crop, and if the Yankees fool with me any more I will whip 'em again." I want to say to General Sherman--who is considered an able man in our part, though some people think he is a kind of careless man about fire--that from the ashes he left us in 1864 we have raised a brave and beautiful city; that somehow or other we have caught the sunshine in the bricks and mortar of our homes, and have builded therein not one ignoble prejudice or memory.

But in all this what have we accomplished? What is the sum of our work? We have found out that in the general summary the free negro counts more than he did as a slave. We have planted the schoolhouse on the hilltop and made it free to white and black. We have sowed towns and cities in the place of theories and put business above politics. We have challenged your spinners in Massachusetts and your iron-makers in Pennsylvania. We have learned that the $400,000,000 annually received from our cotton crop will make us rich, when the supplies that make it are homeraised. We have reduced the commercial rate of interest from twenty-four to six per cent., and are floating four per cent. bonds. We have learned that one Northern immigrant is worth fifty foreigners, and have smoothed the path to southward, wiped out the place where Mason and Dixon's line used to be, and hung our latch-string out, to you and yours. We have reached the point that marks perfect harmony in every household, when the husband confesses that the pies which his wife cooks are as good as those his mother used to bake; and we admit that the sun shines as brightly and the moon as softly as it did "before the war." We have established thrift in city and country. We have fallen in love with work. We have restored comfort to homes from which culture and elegance never departed. We have let economy take root and spread among us as rank as the crabgrass which sprung from Sherman's cavalry camps, until we are ready to lay odds on the Georgia Yankee, as he manufactures relics of the battlefield in a one-story shanty and squeezes pure olive oil out of his cotton seed, against any down-easter that ever swapped wooden nutmegs for flannel sausages in the valleys of Vermont. Above all, we know that we have achieved in these "piping times of peace" a fuller independence for the South than that which our fathers sought to win in the forum by their eloquence or compel on the field by their swords.

It is a rare privilege, sir, to have had part, however humble, in this work. Never was nobler duty confided to human hands than the uplifting and upbuilding of the prostrate and bleeding South, misguided, perhaps, but beautiful in her suffering, and honest, brave and generous always. In the record of her social, industrial, and political institutions we await with confidence the verdict of the world.

But what of the negro? Have we solved the problem he presents or progressed in honor and equity towards the solution? Let the record speak to the point. No section shows a more prosperous laboring population than the negroes of the South; none in fuller sympathy with the employing and landowning class. He shares our school fund, has the fullest protection of our laws and the friendship of our people. Self-interest, as well as honor, demand that he should have this. Our future, our very existence depend upon our working out this problem in full and exact justice. We understand that when Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, your victory was assured; for he then committed you to the cause of human liberty, against which the arms of man cannot prevail; while those of our statesmen who trusted to make slavery the cornerstone of the Confederacy doomed us to defeat as far as they could, committing us to a cause that reason could not defend or the sword maintain in the sight of advancing civilization. Had Mr. Toombs said, which he did not say, that he would call the roll of his slaves at the foot of Bunker Hill, he would have been foolish, for he might have known that whenever slavery became entangled in war it must perish, and that the chattel in human flesh ended forever in New England when your fathers--not to be blamed for parting with what didn't pay--sold their slaves to our fathers--not to be praised for knowing a paying thing when they saw it.

The relations of the Southern people with the negro are close and cordial. We remember with what fidelity for four years he guarded our defenseless women and children, whose husbands and fathers were fighting against his freedom. To his eternal credit be it said that whenever he struck a blow for his own liberty he fought in open battle, and when at last he raised his black and humble hands that the shackles might be struck off, those hands were innocent of wrong against his helpless charges, and worthy to be taken in loving grasp by every man who honors loyalty and devotion. Ruffians have maltreated him, rascals have misled him, philanthropists established a bank for him, but the South, with the North, protests against injustice to this simple and sincere people. To liberty and enfranchisement is as far as law can carry the negro. The rest must be left to conscience and common sense. It should be left to those among whom his lot is cast, with whom he is indissolubly connected and whose prosperity depends upon their possessing his intelligent sympathy and confidence. Faith has been kept with him in spite of calumnious assertions to the contrary by those who assume to speak for us or by frank opponents. Faith will be kept with him in the future, if the South holds her reason and integrity.

But have we kept faith with you? In the fullest sense, yes. When Lee surrendered--I don't say when Johnston surrendered, because I understand he still alludes to the time when he met General Sherman last as the time when he "determined to abandon any further prosecution of the struggle"--when Lee surrendered, I say, and Johnston quit, the South became, and has since been, loyal to this Union. We fought hard enough to know that we were whipped, and in perfect frankness accepted as final the arbitrament of the sword to which we had appealed. The South found her jewel in the toad's head of defeat. The shackles that had held her in narrow limitations fell forever when the shackles of the negro slave were broken. Under the old _regime_ the negroes were slaves to the South, the South was a slave to the system. The old plantation, with its simple police regulation and its feudal habit, was the only type possible under slavery. Thus we gathered in the hands of a splendid and chivalric oligarchy the substance that should have been diffused among the people, as the rich blood, under certain artificial conditions, is gathered at the heart, filling with affluent rapture, but leaving the body chill and colorless.

The Old South rested everything on slavery and agriculture, unconscious that these could neither give nor maintain healthy growth. The New South presents a perfect democracy, the oligarchs leading in the popular movement--a social system compact and closely knitted, less splendid on the surface but stronger at the core--a hundred farms for every plantation, fifty homes for every palace, and diversified industry that meets the complex needs of this complex age.

The New South is enamored of her new work. Her soul is stirred with the breath of a new life. The light of a grander day is falling fair on her face. She is thrilling with the consciousness of growing power and prosperity. As she stands upright, full-statured and equal among the people of the earth, breathing the keen air and looking out upon the expanding horizon, she understands that her emancipation came because in the inscrutable wisdom of God her honest purpose was crossed and her brave armies were beaten.

This is said in no spirit of time-serving or apology. The South has nothing for which to apologize. She believes that the late struggle between the states was war and not rebellion, revolution and not conspiracy, and that her convictions were as honest as yours. I should be unjust to the dauntless spirit of the South and to my own convictions if I did not make this plain in this presence. The South has nothing to take back. In my native town of Athens is a monument that crowns its central hills--a plain, white shaft. Deep cut into its shining side is a name dear to me above the names of men, that of a brave and simple man who died in brave and simple faith. Not for all the glories of New England--from Plymouth Rock all the way--would I exchange the heritage he left me in his soldier's death. To the foot of that shaft I shall send my children's children to reverence him who ennobled their name with his heroic blood. But, sir, speaking from the shadow of that memory, which I honor as I do nothing else on earth, I say that the cause in which he suffered and for which he gave his life was adjudged by higher and fuller wisdom than his or mine, and I am glad that the omniscient God held the balance of battle in His Almighty hand, and that human slavery was swept forever from American soil--the American Union saved from the wreck of war.

This message, Mr. President, comes to you from consecrated ground. Every foot of the soil about the city in which I live is sacred as a battleground of the Republic. Every hill that invests it is hallowed to you by the blood of your brothers, who died for your victory, and doubly hallowed to us by the blood of those who died hopeless, but undaunted, in defeat--sacred soil to all of us, rich with memories that make us purer and stronger and better, silent but stanch witnesses in its red desolation of the matchless valor of American hearts and the deathless glory of American arms--speaking in eloquent witness in its white peace and prosperity to the indissoluble union of American states and the imperishable brotherhood of the American people.

Now, what answer has New England to this message? Will she permit the prejudices of war to remain in the hearts of the conquerors, when it has died in the hearts of the conquered? ("No! No!") Will she transmit this prejudice to the next generation, that in their hearts, which never felt the generous ardor of conflict, it may perpetuate itself? ("No! No!") Will she withhold, save in strained courtesy, the hand which straight from his soldier's heart Grant offered to Lee at Appomattox? Will she make the vision of a restored and happy people, which gathered above the couch of your dying captain, filling his heart with grace, touching his lips with praise and glorifying his path to the grave; will she make this vision on which the last sigh of his expiring soul breathed a benediction, a cheat and a delusion? If she does, the South, never abject in asking for comradeship, must accept with dignity its refusal; but if she does not; if she accepts in frankness and sincerity this message of goodwill and friendship, then will the prophecy of Webster, delivered in this very Society forty years ago amid tremendous applause, be verified in its fullest and final sense, when he said: "Standing hand to hand and clasping hands, we should remain united as we have been for sixty years, citizens of the same country, members of the same government, united, all united now and united forever. There have been difficulties, contentions, and controversies, but I tell you that in my judgment

"'Those opposed eyes,
Which like the meteors of a troubled heaven,
All of one nature, of one substance bred,
Did lately meet in th' intestine shock,
Shall now, in mutual well-beseeming ranks,
March all one way.'"

THE DUTY AND VALUE OF PATRIOTISM

John Ireland, Archbishop of Saint Paul, was born at Burnchurch,
County Kilkenny, Ireland, September 11, 1838. As a boy he came to
Saint Paul, Minnesota, in 1849, and there obtained his secular
education at the Cathedral School. He studied theology in France,
in the seminaries of Meximieux and Hyeres. During the Civil War he
was chaplain of the Fifth Minnesota Regiment. In 1875 he was
consecrated bishop of Saint Paul. In 1869 he founded the first
total-abstinence society in Minnesota and has lectured much on
temperance in the United States and Great Britain. The following
extracts, used by special permission, are from his lecture
delivered before the New York Commandery of the Loyal Legion, New
York, April 4, 1894.

Patriotism is love of country, and loyalty to its life and weal--love tender and strong, tender as the love of son for mother, strong as the pillars of death; loyalty generous and disinterested, shrinking from no sacrifice, seeking no reward save country's honor and country's triumph.

Patriotism! There is magic in the word. It is bliss to repeat it. Through ages the human race burnt the incense of admiration and reverence at the shrines of patriotism. The most beautiful pages of history are those which recount its deeds. Fireside tales, the outpourings of the memories of peoples, borrow from it their warmest glow. Poets are sweetest when they reecho its whisperings; orators are most potent when they thrill its chords to music.

Pagan nations were wrong when they made gods of their noblest patriots. But the error was the excess of a great truth, that heaven unites with earth in approving and blessing patriotism; that patriotism is one of earth's highest virtues, worthy to have come down from the atmosphere of the skies.

The exalted patriotism of the exiled Hebrew exhaled itself in a canticle of religion which Jehovah inspired, and which has been transmitted, as the inheritance of God's people to the Christian Church:

"Upon the rivers of Babylon there we sat and wept, when we
remembered Sion.--If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand
be forgotten. Let my tongue cleave to my jaws, if I do not remember
thee, if I do not make Jerusalem the beginning of my joy."

The human race pays homage to patriotism because of its supreme value. The value of patriotism to a people is above gold and precious stones, above commerce and industry, above citadels and warships. Patriotism is the vital spark of national honor; it is the fount of the nation's prosperity, the shield of the nation's safety. Take patriotism away, the nation's soul has fled, bloom and beauty have vanished from the nation's countenance.

The human race pays homage to patriotism because of its supreme loveliness. Patriotism goes out to what is among earth's possessions the most precious, the first and best and dearest--country--and its effusion is the fragrant flowering of the purest and noblest sentiments of the heart.

Patriotism is innate in all men; the absence of it betokens a perversion of human nature; but it grows its full growth only where thoughts are elevated and heart-beatings are generous.

Next to God is country, and next to religion is patriotism. No praise goes beyond its deserts. It is sublime in its heroic oblation upon the field of battle. "Oh glorious is he," exclaims in Homer the Trojan warrior, "who for his country falls!" It is sublime in the oft-repeated toil of dutiful citizenship. "Of all human doings," writes Cicero, "none is more honorable and more estimable than to merit well of the commonwealth."

Countries are of divine appointment. The Most High "divided the nations, separated the sons of Adam, and appointed the bounds of peoples." The physical and moral necessities of God's creatures are revelations of his will and laws. Man is born a social being. A condition of his existence and of his growth of mature age is the family. Nor does the family suffice to itself. A larger social organism is needed, into which families gather, so as to obtain from one another security to life and property and aid in the development of the faculties and powers with which nature has endowed the children of men.

The whole human race is too extensive and too diversified in interests to serve those ends: hence its subdivisions into countries or peoples. Countries have their providential limits--the waters of a sea, a mountain range, the lines of similarity of requirements or of methods of living. The limits widen in space according to the measure of the destinies which the great Ruler allots to peoples, and the importance of their parts in the mighty work of the cycles of years, the ever-advancing tide of humanity's evolution.

The Lord is the God of nations because he is the God of men. No nation is born into life or vanishes back into nothingness without his bidding. I believe in the providence of God over countries as I believe in his wisdom and his love, and my patriotism to my country rises within my soul invested with the halo of my religion to my God.

More than a century ago a trans-Atlantic poet and philosopher, reading well the signs, wrote:

"Westward the course of empire takes its way.
The first four acts already past,
A fifth shall close the drama with the day;
Time's noblest offspring is the last."

Berkeley's prophetic eye had descried America. What shall I say, in a brief discourse of my country's value and beauty, of her claims to my love and loyalty? I will pass by in silence her fields and forests, her rivers and seas, the boundless riches hidden beneath her soil and amid the rocks of her mountains, her pure and health-giving air, her transcendent wealth of nature's fairest and most precious gifts. I will not speak of the noble qualities and robust deeds of her sons, skilled in commerce and industry, valorous in war, prosperous in peace. In all these things America is opulent and great: but beyond them and above them in her singular grandeur, to which her material splendor is only the fitting circumstance.

America born into the family of nations in these latter times is the highest billow in humanity's evolution, the crowning effort of ages in the aggrandizement of man. Unless we take her in this altitude, we do not comprehend her; we belittle her towering stature and conceal the singular design of Providence in her creation.

America is the country of human dignity and human liberty.

When the fathers of the republic declared "that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," a cardinal principle was enunciated which in its truth was as old as the race, but in practical realization almost unknown.

Slowly, amid sufferings and revolutions, humanity had been reaching out toward a reign of the rights of man. Ante-Christian paganism had utterly denied such rights. It allowed nothing to man as man; he was what wealth, place, or power made him. Even the wise Aristotle taught that some men were intended by nature to be slaves and chattels. The sweet religion of Christ proclaimed aloud the doctrine of the common fatherhood of God and the universal brotherhood of men.

Eighteen hundred years, however, went by, and the civilized world had not yet put its civil and political institutions in accord with its spiritual faith. The Christian Church was all this time leavening human society and patiently awaiting the promised fermentation. This came at last, and it came in America. It came in a first manifestation through the Declaration of Independence; it came in a second and final manifestation through President Lincoln's Proclamation of Emancipation.

In America all men are civilly and politically equal; all have the same rights; all wield the same arm of defense and of conquest, the suffrage; and the sole condition of rights and of power is simple manhood.

Liberty is the exemption from all restraint save that of the laws of justice and order; the exemption from submission to other men, except as they represent and enforce those laws. The divine gift of liberty to man is God's recognition of his greatness and his dignity. The sweetness of man's life and the power of growth lie in liberty. The loss of liberty is the loss of light and sunshine, the loss of life's best portion. Humanity, under the spell of heavenly memories, never ceased to dream of liberty and to aspire to its possession. Now and then, here and there, its refreshing breezes caressed humanity's brow. But not until the republic of the West was born, not until the Star-Spangled Banner rose toward the skies, was liberty caught up in humanity's embrace and embodied in a great and abiding nation.

In America the government takes from the liberty of the citizen only so much as is necessary for the weal of the nation, which the citizen by his own act freely concedes. In America there are no masters, who govern in their own rights, for their own interests, or at their own will. We have over us no Louis XIV, saying: "L'etat, c'est moi;" no Hohenzollern, announcing that in his acts as sovereign he is responsible only to his conscience and to God.

Ours is the government of the people, by the people, for the people. The government is our organized will. There is no state above or apart from the people. Rights begin with and go upward from the people. In other countries, even those apparently the most free, rights begin with and come downward from the state; the rights of citizens, the rights of the people, are concessions which have been painfully wrenched from the governing powers.

With Americans, whenever the organized government does not prove its grant, the liberty of the individual citizen is sacred and inviolable. Elsewhere there are governments called republics; universal suffrage constitutes the state; but, once constituted, the state is tyrannous and arbitrary, invades at will private rights, and curtails at will individual liberty. One republic is liberty's native home--America.

OUR COUNTRY

From the speech of President McKinley, in response to the toast
"Our Country," at the Peace Jubilee banquet in Chicago, October 19,
1898.

MR. TOASTMASTER AND GENTLEMEN:--It affords me gratification to meet the people of the city of Chicago and to participate with them in this patriotic celebration. Upon the suspension of hostilities of a foreign war, the first in our history for over half a century, we have met in a spirit of peace, profoundly grateful for the glorious advancement already made, and earnestly wishing in the final termination to realize an equally glorious fulfillment. With no feeling of exultation, but with profound thankfulness, we contemplate the events of the past five months. They have been too serious to admit of boasting or vain-glorification. They have been so full of responsibilities, immediate and prospective, as to admonish the soberest judgment and counsel the most conservative action.

This is not the time to fire the imagination, but rather to discover, in calm reason, the way to truth, and justice, and right, and when discovered to follow it with fidelity and courage, without fear, hesitation, or weakness.

The war has put upon the nation grave responsibilities. Their extent was not anticipated and could not have been well foreseen. We cannot escape the obligations of victory. We cannot avoid the serious questions which have been brought home to us by the achievements of our arms on land and sea. We are bound in conscience to keep and perform the covenants which the war has sacredly sealed with mankind. Accepting war for humanity's sake, we must accept all obligations which the war in duty and honor imposed upon us. The splendid victories we have achieved would be our eternal shame and not our everlasting glory if they led to the weakening of our original lofty purpose or to the desertion of the immortal principles on which the national government was founded, and in accordance with whose ennobling spirit it has ever since been faithfully administered.

The war with Spain was undertaken not that the United States should increase its territory, but that oppression at our very doors should be stopped. This noble sentiment must continue to animate us, and we must give to the world the full demonstration of the sincerity of our purpose. Duty determines destiny. Destiny which results from duty performed may bring anxiety and perils, but never failure and dishonor. Pursuing duty may not always lead by smooth paths. Another course may look easier and more attractive, but pursuing duty for duty's sake is always sure and safe and honorable. It is not within the power of man to foretell the future and to solve unerringly its mighty problems. Almighty God has His plans and methods for human progress, and not infrequently they are shrouded for the time being in impenetrable mystery. Looking backward we can see how the hand of destiny builded for us and assigned us tasks whose full meaning was not apprehended even by the wisest statesmen of their times.

Our colonial ancestors did not enter upon their war originally for independence. Abraham Lincoln did not start out to free the slaves, but to save the Union. The war with Spain was not of our seeking, and some of its consequences may not be to our liking. Our vision is often defective. Short-sightedness is a common malady, but the closer we get to things or they get to us the clearer our view and the less obscure our duty. Patriotism must be faithful as well as fervent; statesmanship must be wise as well as fearless--not the statesmanship which will command the applause of the hour, but the approving judgment of posterity.

The progress of a nation can alone prevent degeneration. There must be new life and purpose, or there will be weakness and decay. There must be broadening of thought as well as broadening of trade. Territorial expansion is not alone and always necessary to national advancement. There must be a constant movement toward a higher and nobler civilization, a civilization that shall make its conquests without resort to war and achieve its greatest victories pursuing the arts of peace.

In our present situation duty--and duty alone--should prescribe the boundary of our responsibilities and the scope of our undertakings. The final determination of our purposes awaits the action of the eminent men who are charged by the executive with the making of the treaty of peace, and that of the senate of the United States, which, by our constitution, must ratify and confirm it. We all hope and pray that the confirmation of peace will be as just and humane as the conduct and consummation of the war. When the work of the treaty-makers is done the work of the law-makers will begin. The one will settle the extent of our responsibilities; the other must provide the legislation to meet them. The army and navy have nobly and heroically performed their part. May God give the executive and congress wisdom to perform theirs.

BEHOLD THE AMERICAN

From the speech of Rev. Dr. T. DeWitt Talmage at the eighty-first
annual dinner of the New England Society in New York, December 22,
1886.

MR. PRESIDENT, AND ALL YOU GOOD NEW ENGLANDERS:--If we leave to the evolutionists to guess where we came from and to the theologians to prophesy where are we going to, we still have left for consideration the fact that we are here; and we are here at an interesting time. Of all the centuries this is the best century, and of all the decades of the century this is the best decade, and of all the years of the decade this is the best year, and of all the months of the year this is the best month, and of all the nights of the month this is the best night. Many of these advantages we trace straight back to Forefathers' Day, about which I am to speak.