BROTHERHOOD AND THE HEROIC VIRTUES ADDRESS AT VETERANS' REUNION, BURLINGTON, VERMONT, THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 5, 1901 BROTHERHOOD AND THE HEROIC VIRTUES SPEAK to you to-night less as men of Vermont than as members of the Grand Army which saved the Union. But at the outset I must pay a special tribute to your State. Vermont was not a rich State, compared with many States, and she had sent out so many tens of thousands of her sons to the West that it is not improbable that as many men of Vermont birth served in the regiments of other States as in those of her own State. Yet, notwithstanding this drain, your gallant State was surpassed by no other State of the North, either in the number of men according to her population which she sent into the army, or in the relative extent of her financial support of the war. Too much cannot be said of the high quality of the Vermont soldiers; and one contributing factor in securing this high quality was the good sense which continually sent recruits into the already existing regiments instead of forming new ones. It is difficult to express the full measure of obligation under which this country is to the men who from '61 to '65 took up the most terrible and vitally necessary task which has ever fallen to the lot of any generation of men in the western hemisphere. Other men have rendered great service to the country, but the service you rendered was not merely great-it was incalculable. Other men by their lives or their deaths have kept unstained our honor, have wrought marvels for our interest, have led us forward to triumph, or warded off disaster from us; other men have marshaled our ranks upward across the stony slopes of greatness. But you did more, for you saved us from annihilation. We can feel proud of what others did only because of what you did. It was given to you, when the mighty days came, to do the mighty deeds, for which the days called, and if your deeds had been left undone, all that had been already accomplished would have turned into apples of Sodom under our teeth. The glory of Washington and the majesty of Marshall would have crumbled into meaningless dust if you and your comrades had not buttressed their work with your strength of steel, your courage of fire. The Declaration of Independence would now sound like a windy platitude, the Constitution |