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ers, carried our banners on to victory and glory. [Applause.] What know or care we in these quiet, heavenly, beautiful, stupid times of peace. [Laughter.] What care we for the ruddy paraphernalia and furcre and general hell of war? [Applause and laughter.] Who can see a marching army now? Who can see the obscure and unknown soldier, bearing upon his shoulder a heavy rifle, marching up to the line of death, led by as brave and gallant officers as ever lived on earth, [applause] hunting death, not for the sake of glory, not for the love of war in itself, but loving war as the great instrument of constitutional liberty? [Applause.] They made war glorious. They made the elements about us hideous, but they lived to see the clouds break away, and to look up into the clear, blue sky with earnest hope that at last the glorious end would come. And it did come; it came under their direction, management and control, and through their heroism. Oh! it was heroism-hero-ism! Talk about the great battles of antiquity! Talk about the great generals of the old time, all the way down from Ramses the Great to the greatest general on the continent of Europe to-day! Where did the world ever see greater generalship than in our late unhappy civil war? [Applause.] Read history, will you, to find out about Grant's strategy! [Applause.] Read about magnificent war, about great generals and brave soldiers! Why, you who are alive now, and were alive then, and big enough and brave enough to open your eyes and look into the volcano that was before you, you need not read any more history. [Laughter and applause.] Some of the men of those days are yet spared to us, thank God! and some of them are moving in our very midst, and under our very eyes, modest and retiring as women, biding their time in their plain ways of life, going on, step by step, out of sight down towards the grave. Oh, Grand Army! Oh, Soldiers of the Society of the Army of the Tennessee! How much you have rendered to mankind! how much you have done for liberty, how much for our own blessed country, how much for the happiness of the countless millions within the boundaries of our own blessed Republic! Shall the world forget it, and forget it in a day? Shall the busy, unthinking world let that army and its soldiers drift out of sight before they die? Is it an easy thing to die? Are we, any of us, quite willing to give away this precious gift of a soul that God planted in our bosoms? Are we anxious to throw it away as a valueless

bauble upon the empty wind? How we hug it, and treasure it! And yet that Army of the Tennessee, the men in that Army who made it, offered their lives as a toy in their hands. Oh, blessed men! O, sweet memory! As the lives come up before me like a beautiful vision, I see them to-day falling to the right and left, a sacrifice to God and country. [Applause.] While I shall be spared, and my tongue shall be left to be lifted, it shall be forever lifted in utterance of words of praise to them. What would we be to-day in the midst of that angry war, where human passion was red hot, and men were wild, ready to tear the flag into atoms, ready to rend the Republic in twain? They do not feel so now, but they were then a very dangerous enemy-a very formidable enemy, a very proud, brave enemy-bent on the destruction of their own country. The Army of the Tennessee, the Army of the Cumberland, the Army of the Ohio, the Army of the Potomac-all of the armies of the great Republic-stood side by side to resist the fell stroke that was lifted to sever and sink the Nation. Not in anger, not in blood, not in wrath, but gently and kindly admonish them, as did that great immortal spirit since gone from us, shot at the helm of the Nation, while his great throbbing heart, gentle and kind as a lamb, loved them whilst yet he struck them, imploring and begging them to lay down their arms and receive grace, and mercy and kindness from their conquerors. And the illustrious General of the Army, catching the spirit of that noble President, when the fatal hour came, that the enemy must fall, and did fall, as though a spirit had fled away from the bosom of Christ in Heaven, and come into his own manly, pure, sweet, chaste breast-General Grant-[cheers] held out the olive branch to those whom he had conquered. [Cheers.] We whipped them as a mother, what do you call it?—wallops a child, [laughter] as an old man will larrup his boy. [Laughter and applause.] We whipped them to make them better. It is true, and every soldier will bear testimony to the bold utterance that I make before you, and have made a hundred times before, that there was no unkind feeling on our side, no hatred, no malice, during the war. It was nothing but a lofty sense of duty; nothing but a conscientious understanding of the Constitution of the United States, and the Union under the Constitution; nothing but a clear understanding of that instrument, and the consequences resulting from it, which impelled us during that great

war.

tion.

We did not forget that the fathers gave us the ConstituWe understood it. We understand it now. The Society of the Army of the Tennessee understands it, and the Army of the Tennessee itself understood the Constitution. Perhaps the boys. in the ranks could not quote a line of it; perhaps they could not tell you anything about when, or where, or how, the Constitution. was adopted. They could not tell you the various steps that were taken by the states to ratify it, as the people finally did ratify it. They could not go through with all that musty talk, but every one of them understood it, just as a Christian understands the Bible, though he may read it ever so little. They caught the spirit of it. It grew up into manhood and womanhood with them, and they knew that that Constitution meant that there could be but one Union, and that it was inseparable; that it was imperishable; that it was everlasting; that it was a covenant of man with man, never to be broken. No state, nor man, nor multitudes of men, can break it. It was, it is the bond of Union that holds the great Republic together. This country to-day, in its magnificent development, is the wonder of the world. It is the ceaseless wonder of the world to-day-sixty millions of people living in thirty-eight states and eight organized territories, over four million square miles of surface, moving on as one great compact body, in peace and prosperity. Where was there ever such a Government under the sun before? How much, then, women and men of Illinois, how much, then, we owe to that splendid Army? How much we owe to those brave soldiers? God help us to properly appreciate their worth to our land! God help us to be brave and good enough to do them justice. while yet they live amongst us? I think I catch something of the spirit of the whole thing. What object have I in living, I would like to know, if I cannot give my best devotions here in a material sense to my country? What right have I to be parading among you here, cutting a figure in the world [laughter] and not caring a continental cuss about anything but myself? [Laughter and applause.] What right have I, or any other fellow, to be living in any such way as that? That man will always be the strongest, that man will always be the best, always the greatest in war or in peace, in politics or polemics, in philosophy or morality, or the actual employments of life—that man will always be best and stand highest who loves his country best. [Ap

plause.] Don't you see how hard it is to beat us when we run for office? [Laughter and applause.] Oh, what a splendid thing then is this sentiment, this idea of country, this love of country. Every soldier had it, ladies. Some of them I know cut rather ungainly figures to-day. I see some of them every day of my life that I would not pick out as specimens of beauty. [Laughter.] They go tottering along through all the meandering paths of this complicated life of ours, stumbling and falling about in every direction, but nevertheless each one of them had the gift of a patriotic heart, and each one of them offered his soul for his country. [Applause.] They get pensions. Yes, yes, they do; and we will see to it that they keep on getting them. [Applause.] Uncle Sam is abundantly able to pay them, and if there is not sufficient statesmanship to be found in this country outside of the surviving officers and men of the army, there will be enough found in it to provide the means to pay the most ample and generous pensions, until the last one is dead, as well as his widow and children. [Applause.] And it is not very much after we get it. [Laughter.] Fellow by fellow, man by man, it is not so very much, but I believe the people of this country give it cheerfully. I do believe that, comrades. The little bit that comes to you, comrades, in the way of pensions, I believe it comes with the sanction and good will of all the patriotic men and women of the country. [Applause.] I do believe it. As I said the other day, I say again to-night, it is mighty troublesome to be running around and getting up affidavits and certificates to prove where a fellow got wounded or sick. A great many of the witnesses are dead; a great many of us cannot remember; and yet before you can get a pension, or before the widow of a soldier can get a pension, you have got to get cords of certificates and affidavits, and a good deal of swearing, and a big pile of papers, before you can. get through the claim agent's hands and through the office of the Commissioner of Pensions-and some of them don't get them through. Now, boys, it would be much better if we all got pensions, sick or not sick. [Laughter and applause.] Then there would have to be but one little oath. You would only have to prove that you were a soldier. I do not, but the generous people of this country will get around to that after a while. There are so many of us, that's what's the matter with the thing, and we live so long. [Laughter.] I doubt not the time will come when

it will be done. The people of the South will vote for us. I believe they will. I know the darkies will. [Laughter.] These are some of the rewards that the defender of the country receives, but I think he receives something higher than that. I believe that when people come to think upon the subject, when they get full possession of themselves and stand face to face with the facts, I believe they will know that the good, faithful, honest soldier receives something which to him is more precious than a pension. I believe that he receives the genuine gratitude of all the American people. [Applause.]

Fellow citizens, this subject of the late war is, of course, a very extensive one. There are many lights in which to deal with it. I do not know whether, under the providence of God, or under the other theory of the development of species, or under the development of nature itself, it had inevitably to come, or not, nor do I know that anybody will ever be able to solve that question. Philosophy will come along after a while with its splendid theories upon the subject, to be read and studied and taught in the schools. The fact is an accomplished one. The past is past. Theorize upon it as we may, we know that we have lept the chasm and are safely on the other side. I mean the chasm of civil war in the Republic. It has been the severe test of every nation that ever existed. In ancient Egypt they had it, a thousand years before the birth of Abraham, It has been the curse and the test of every nation that ever stood, and all the other nations except our own, said the Republic could never stand the test of a civil war. So, if it had to come, it did come. If it was sent to test our fidelity to our cause and our fealty to the Union, if it was sent as a test of our uprightness and manliness, if it was sent to see whether we were really true to liberty or not, the test had been made, and that black, cruel and damnable stain of slavery, the blackest that ever called forth the best efforts of man or soldier was swept out by it, once and for all. [Applause.] I want to know, comrades, of you here to-night, whether you do not think so. Does not every one of you feel lifted up into a high moral atmosphere when you analyze in your own breasts the good you have done for your country? It will lift a man on to a higher plane than any other on earth, than I can conceive of. Oh, comrades! our reward has gone along with us. When they get up to welcome us now, they tell us that our names will be written upon the golden

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