Address Delivered Decoration Day, Nine- HE constant seasons have once more brought flowers to grace the graves of heroes. The constant love of a grateful people again assembles them throughout the land to pay homage to the Union dead. To-day is our national Sabbath. Here where so long these have kept a silent camp, I greet you, my countrymen, invoking a spirit of veneration for their memory and of pride in the splendor of the nation their sacrifice cemented and their valor exalted. So lively our recollection of their mighty deeds, it is difficult to realize that forty years have passed since the curtain here rose on the awful drama of civil war. Yet the conflict was waged near midday of the same century in which Napoleon's battalions shook all Europe with a storm of fire and blood; and as mere military spectacles, without regard to their tremendous results, these wars will ever absorb and divide the attention of the reader of history as the surpassing contests of all the ages. "Lest we forget" it is the imperative duty of the one who speaks and of all who listen on these occasions, to 5 hold ever fast to the fact that these services are the tribute that can never be rendered except to past loyalty. The stern truth to be thoroughly emphasized is that no matter what the condonation granted to the errors and what admiration admitted of the deeds of others, the country's gratitude can only go out and must ever go out to those who, in time of its peril, without question or halting, enrolled themselves on the side of right; and the side of right ever was and ever must be the side which trains under our country's flag. Because these men did this and without hesitation or reserve went unselfishly to suffering and death, to them at all times, then and now and henceforth, was, is and shall be surpassing honor. And let coming generations of Americans study well the bitter lesson which the passing one saw taught in suffering and blood and enforced by defeat and humiliation that patriotism knows no divided duty and loyalty has no degrees. And a further truth to be here recognized is that the distinction of rank, station and individual actions is most unsubstantial, and destined soon to fade: the glory of the whole achievement is what endures and its luster finally falls substantially on all alike. It is known that the vast majority of those who gave their lives in this service were men poor in this world's goods, obscure in station, rich only in love of country, fortunate in little save the opportunity that came to each to make the priceless sacrifice. Most of them died unnoticed by any save their immediate comrades, and as individuals were accorded but scant recognition-yet how stands it now that forty years have passed since the war began? How benevolent is time! how softening the effect of distance! Now we are as those who, leaving the rocks and crags, the fastnesses and caverns of the mountains, withdraw to a great distance and then look back. The rough places have disappeared; the forbidding features are gone; instead, we see the blended outlines of the one great range, a majestic whole, united, harmonious and imposing. And so with the grand armies of the Union. Aside from a few illustrious ones of those who led them, who remembers the individual names or the deserts of the more than million men who marched under the flag? Yet who forgets or diminishes the glory of the whole array. Of the occupants of these graves, what ones went forth to die filled with stern convictions of duty, and what ones, in careless love of adventure, went thoughtlessly to the same glorious fate, we do not know. Was this a saint and that a sinner? Went this one to his end, having washed every stain from out his conscience; and went that one unworthy and unprepared? We mortals do not ask, nor do we care. We only know that be it much or little, they have each a share in the common glory of the great achievement, and here to-day with impartiality we give every one an equal share of our flowers and our praise. Thank Heaven that it is so, and may memory's equity ever keep it thus. But what of the men of the South who fought and died under its short-lived banner? Forty years have passed since the war began. The time for hate and misunderstanding has gone forever, and they should not, and do not abide in sane and wholesome minds. To-day, with clearer, calmer vision, we see the unhappy conflict as it really was. Freed from the passions and prejudices of the past, we may render a juster judg ment. Without fear of being misunderstood, we may now also give just recognition to the deeds of those who dared to risk their lives in war for that they had in peace dared advocate, hear and believe. Old things have loosed their hold upon us, and now we see that the war between the sections for the preservation of this Union was but the natural result of conditions which it required the shock of desperate conflict to remove. The soil on which we stand was where this was most accutely shown; for it was Kentucky's hard lot to lose her autonomy as a warring State in those bitter days. Her sons doubted and differed, and went their several ways as inclination or impulse prompted, to later meet in opposing ranks in the struggle over the nation's life. Peace and eternal rest, then, to those who espoused and fell in the Confederacy's mistaken cause. Ours be the generosity and justice to admit their courage and their sacrifice, in these good days that have seen, side by side under the stars and stripes, a Grant and a Lee and a Wheeler fight, and a Logan die. Glorious days, indeed, are these of the bright new century, when eager hands stretch forth from the South to grasp the prizes of commissions in the nation's army and navy. When the President is received with loyal shouts in Memphis and New Orleans, when peace monuments are being built and Grand Army posts decorate Confederate graves; when our transports are sailing over the sea, bringing to their homes men of the North and South who, shoulder to shoulder, have upheld the dignity and enforced the supremacy of the nation on the other side of the earth. Happy days, in truth, when occur such things as this very day took place at the spot once known as Camp Morton. Hard and bitter to memory of the South, the recollections which this name recalls. Established at the capital of ever-faithful Indiana, it was called after her great son whose relentless loyalty made his name to be hated and feared beyond the border. I dare say that it was ordered and kept with such humanity as the conditions allowed. But alas, the rigors of war are great, and of the fifteen thousand Southern soldiers in captivity there, all suffered and many died. There, through all the succeeding years, in quiet Greenlawn, the unclaimed dead have slept in what must have seemed to them an alien and inhospitable soil. There they rest now, but not among enemies, and no longer forgotten: the sun of the twentieth century shining into the hearts of their one-time foes, has softened them to pity, to forgiveness and to kindly admiration. And so it has come to pass that on this blessed day, for the first time since the war, the Grand Army of the Republic has accorded honors to these dead. By the hands of Indiana women and children these long forgotten graves have been decorated with Indiana flowers; and with reverent hands and speech our people have accorded them a loving recognition, which is henceforth to be given so long as this day shall be observed. Historians seeking for the sources of the conflict have found many and ample causes. Lack of acquaintance and communication between the sections, climatic and educational differences, a sectional institution, narrowness of statesmanship, ambition of politicians, the mendacity of demagogues are said to have been its manifold parentage. Be it so for those who fix always their gaze upon the ground. But here on this sacred |