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those who, in the iron years from '61 to '65, bore on their shoulders the burden of saving the Union. They did not choose the easy task. They did not shirk the difficult duty. Deliberately and of their own free will they strove for an ideal, upward and onward across the stony slopes of greatness. They did the hardest work that was then to be done; they bore the heaviest burden that any generation of Americans ever had to bear; and because they did this they have won such proud joy as it has fallen to the lot of no other men to win, and have written their names forevermore on the golden honor roll of the nation. As it is with the soldier, so it is with the civilian. To win success in the business world, to become a first-class mechanic, a successful farmer, an able lawyer or doctor, means that the man has devoted his best energy and power through long years to the achievement of his ends. So it is in the life of the family, upon which in the last analysis the whole welfare of the nation rests. The man or woman who as bread-winner and home-maker, or as wife and mother, has done all that he or she can do, patiently and uncomplainingly, is to be honored; and is to be envied by all those who have never had the good fortune to feel the need and duty of doing such work. The woman who has borne, and who has reared as they should be reared, a family of children, has in the most emphatic manner deserved well of the Republic. Her burden has been heavy, and she has been able to bear it worthily only by the possession of resolution, of good sense, of conscience, and of unselfishness. But if she has borne it well, then to her shall come the supreme blessing, for in the words of the oldest and greatest of books, "Her children shall rise up and call her blessed"; and among the benefactors of the land her place must be with those who have done the best and the hardest work whether as lawgivers or as soldiers, whether in public or in private life.

This is not a soft and easy creed to preach. It is a creed willingly learned only by men and women who, together with the softer virtues, possess also the stronger; who can do, and dare, and die at need, but who while life lasts will never flinch from their allotted task. You farmers, and wage workers, and business men of this great State, of this mighty and wonderful nation, are gathered together to-day, proud of your State and still prouder of your Nation, because your forefathers and predecessors have lived up to just this creed. You have received from their hands a great inheritance, and you will leave an even greater inheritance to your children and your children's children, provided only that you practise alike in your private and your public lives the strong virtues that have given us as a people greatness in the past. It is not enough to be well-meaning and kindly, but weak; neither is it enough to be strong, unless morality and decency go hand in hand with strength. We must possess the qualities which make us do our duty in our homes and among our neighbors, and in addition we must possess the qualities which are indispensable to the makeup of every great and masterful nation-the qualities of courage and hardihood, of individual initiative and yet of power to combine for a common end, and, above all, the resolute determination to permit no man and no set of men to sunder us one from the other by lines of caste or creed or section. We must act upon the motto of all for each and each for all. There must be ever present in our minds the fundamental truth that in a republic such as ours the only safety is to stand neither for nor against any man because he is rich or because he is poor, because he is engaged in one occupation or another, because he works with his brains or because he works with his hands. We must treat each man on his worth and merits as a man. We must see that each is given a square deal, because he is entitled to no more and should receive

no less.

Finally we must keep ever in mind that a republic such as ours can exist only by virtue of the orderly liberty which comes through the equal domination of the law over all men alike, and through its administration in such resolute and fearless fashion as shall teach all that no man is above it and no man below it.

XXXVII

AT ANTIETAM, SEPTEMBER 17, 1903

Governor Murphy, Veterans of New Jersey, men of the Grand Army:

I thank you of New Jersey for the monument to the troops of New Jersey who fought at Antietam, and on behalf of the nation I accept the gift. We meet to-day upon one of the great battlefields of the Civil War. No other battle of the Civil War lasting but one day shows as great a percentage of loss as that which occurred here upon the day on which Antietam was fought.

Moreover,

in its ultimate effects this battle was of momentous and even decisive importance; for when it had ended and Lee had retreated south of the Potomac, Lincoln forthwith published that immortal paper, the preliminary declaration of emancipation; the paper which decided that the Civil War, besides being a war for the preservation of the Union, should be a war for the emancipation of the slave, so that from that time onward the causes of Union and of Freedom, of national greatness and individual liberty, were one and the same.

Men of New Jersey, I congratulate your State because she has a right to claim her full share in the honor and glory of that memorable day; and I congratulate you, Governor Murphy, because on that day you had the high good fortune to serve as a lad with credit and honor in one of the five regiments which your State sent to the battle. Four of those regiments, by the way, served in

own.

the division commanded by that gallant soldier, Henry W. Slocum, whom we of New York can claim as our The other regiment, that in which Governor Murphy served, although practically an entirely new regiment, did work as good as that of any veteran organization upon the field, and suffered a proportional loss. This regiment was at one time ordered to the support of a division commanded by another New York soldier, the gallant General Greene, whose son himself served as a major-general in the war with Spain and is now, as Police Commissioner of New York, rendering as signal service in civil life as he had already rendered in military life.

If the issue of Antietam had been other than it was, it is probable that at least two great European powers would have recognized the independence of the Confederacy; so that you who fought here forty-one years ago have the profound satisfaction of feeling that you played well your part in one of those crises big with the fate of all mankind. You men of the Grand Army by your victory not only rendered all Americans your debtors forevermore, but you rendered all humanity your debtors. If the Union had been dissolved, if the great edifice built with blood and sweat and tears by mighty Washington and his compeers had gone down in wreck and ruin, the result would have been an incalculable calamity, not only for our people-and most of all for those who, in such event would have seemingly triumphed-but for all mankind. The great American Republic would have become a memory of derision; and the failure of the experiment of self-government by a great people on a great scale would have delighted the heart of every foe of republican institutions. Our country, now so great and so wonderful, would have been split into little jangling rival nationalities, each with a history both bloody and contemptible. It was because you, the men who wear the button of the Grand Army, triumphed in those dark years, that every

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