more choice than any other word that can be applied to the private soldier in that or any other war. How few among the people who bandy upon their lips from day to day the term "old vet," sometimes in respect, more often in derision, know what they are talking about. Do they know as you know that the title of veteran volunteer is a distinctive one, that no man is entitled to wear it, and no patriot ought to apply it to any man except to such as it belongs to; that it belongs, under the orders of the Government, to the men who, in the dark hours of '63 and '64, after the novelty of war had worn off, whose patriotism was still undimmed, and when the call came for an extension of service, with a prayer in their hearts for the loved ones at home, God bless them, but the fire of patriotism still burning bright, with unblanched face and with steady hand, wrote their names for three years more, or during the war. It is for you to see that terms are applied to those whose are entitled to them, that the distinction should be observed, and that the heritage left by our dead to their children, and the heritage which will be left by you to your children, be not shared with equal glory by him of four years' service, and him whose record is only found in 1865 in the traditions of the home camp or the ambulance train. The responsibility is with you. What you say will be respected, for you talk of that of which you know. Let politicians scratch the backs of the February volunteers of 1865 with $800 bounty. But, soldiers, I ask you to stand by the men of 1861-'62 and the re-enlistments of 1863-'64. Then our children will see that the meed of patriotism is given to those to whom it belongs. How do we expect to breed and raise soldiers if, twentyfive years after the war, we put cowards on the same footing with heroes. The poet says: In tangled wood, in mountain glen, On battle plain, in prison pen, Four hundred thousand of the brave, Have made our ransomed soil their grave. E'en as I speak, see! Over the river they beckon to me, Loved ones who've crossed to the further side, The gleam of their snowy robes I see, But their voices are lost in the dashing tide. NINTH TOAST.-"The Memory of General Sherman." Response by Colonel AUGUSTUS JACOBSON. We mourn our great chief. We mourn our commander in whom our confidence was limitless. We mourn our leader who was at the same time our warm, genial personal friend. For the place in history which General Sherman is to hold among the world's great commanders we care nothing. His deeds will take care of his fame. He did whatsoever his hand found to do. He did his best at Shiloh. He helped to free the Mississippi. He took Atlanta. He marched to the sea and made the heart of the Nation leap for joy. With sixty thousand living clinchers of Daniel Webster's argument he marched through the state of John C. Calhoun, and thereby clinched forevermore the argument for the preservation of the Union. He moved north and helped to induce General Lee to move south. Of conquest he never thought. Victor and vanquished were to him alike the children and joint heirs of American liberty. His public career finished, in the fullness of his years he settled down in his own modest little home, among other quiet citizens, and became one of them, a tender, loving father, with his children and grand-children about him, loving him as he loved them. General Sherman was the most interesting man of his day. For years he wrote and spoke incessantly, but the people never had enough and always wanted to hear and read more. The people. wanted to hear him because he was American to the core. Whatever he said and did smacked of American soil. The Tiber and the Mediterranean were nothing to him compared with the Mississippi and Lake Michigan. To him the river Jordan didn't begin to be as sacred as the Tennessee. The government of the United States was to General Sherman, the best mankind has hitherto achieved-the very acme of human wisdom. It was to him a government of law and stability and all else was chaos. Whatsoever stood in its way must get out of the way or be crushed. He knew the weakness of men as well as their strength. He labored under no delusion as to the character of the men who might for the time being administer the government. They might be weak. They might be timid. They might be foolish or even corrupt. But the government of the United States, itself, was to him the most sacred thing on earth. the ark of the covenant. It was the holy of holies. It was General Sherman's Americanism grew with his growth and strengthened with his strength. In the beginning of the war, in our day of national woe and humiliation, he saw that the ruling classes in Europe did not and could not favor us. The privileged classes of England shouted for joy at our misfortunes. The London Times thought it perpetrated the greatest joke of its existence when it called us the Untied States of America. It was a glad day in the Tuileries when Jefferson Davis announced the advent: of the Southern Confederacy. To show how completely he believed we were undone, the little Napoleon, who was the Boss Tweed of France, sent a toy Emperor to Mexico to be an offense in the nostrils of the free people of this free land. But the Lancashire weavers were our friends, and voted that they would rather starve than that the slave confederacy should triumph. The poor and the struggling everywhere were instinctively our friends. They knew that our cause was their cause. They knew that the government for which we were fighting was a government such as they needed and wanted, and for which they were hungering and thirsting. "God said: I am tired of kings, I suffer them no more; Up to my ear the morning brings The outrage of the poor." "I will have never a noble; No lineage counted great; Fishers and choppers and ploughmen, Shall constitute a state." This people and this government General Sherman served nearly all his life. The people loved him and they love his memory. His place in the heart of the American people can never be disturbed. It follows that of Grant as Grant follows Lincoln, as Lincoln follows Washington. It is Washington, Lincoln, Grant and Sherman, and so shall it be so long as there shall be on earth an American heart to beat and an American tongue to wag. General Dodge :-The following members of our Society are appointed as the General Sherman Statue Committee, under the resolution passed to-day. Colonel J. F. How, St. Louis, Mo. General J. W. Noble, Washington, D. C. Colonel W. McCrory, Minneapolis, Minn. General Dodge then declared the Twenty-third meeting of the Society of the Army of the Tennessee adjourned, to meet in St. Louis at a date in 1892 to be hereafter fixed. The committee appointed to prepare a Memorial to Colonel L. M. Dayton, submit the following: COLONEL L. M. DAYTON. During the war no man except General Sherman was a more familiar figure to the Army of the Tennessee than our friend and comrade Colonel Dayton. In the field the two were always side by side. In peace, Colonel Dayton, being the Recording Secretary of the Society of the Army of the Tennessee, always appeared at our reunions with General Sherman. Colonel Dayton began as an aide de camp with General Sherman at Shiloh and was by his side and wrote many of his orders in the field all through the war. It is not necessary, therefore, to speak of Colonel Dayton's military services. Turn to General Sherman's Memoirs and "L. M. Dayton, Captain and aide de camp" appears signed to many of the orders quoted. So long as Sherman's Memoirs shall be read the name of Dayton will live. We all knew General Sherman, and from what we knew of him we know that unless Colonel Dayton had been an officer of the highest possible ability and efficiency he would not have been where he was all through the war, from Shiloh to the review in Washington in May, 1865. We know that Colonel Dayton was where he was and remained there because General Sherman knew of no better man for the place. General Sherman asked for nothing for himself, and he looked upon his military family as belonging too closely to himself to ask for anything for them His staff officers suffered from this modesty. Colonel Dayton was not a self-seeker, and he was promoted only once; and he was not promoted then until General Sherman's corps commanders went to him at Savannah and asked personally that he should recommend Captain Dayton for a promotion similar to that which they had asked for officers at their own headquar ters. It was, in fact, upon the recommendation of the representative men of the whole of Sherman's army that Dayton was made Lieutenant Colonel and Assistant Adjutant General. In civil life Colonel Dayton was a successful manufacturer. His success in business bears out the evidence furnished by his military career that he was a man of high executive ability. He was for twenty-five years a prominent figure in business and social life in Cincinnati. He was for some time President of the Society of exArmy and Navy Officers, in Cincinnati, and he was one of the charter members of the Ohio Commandery of the Military Order of the Loval Legion. Lewis Mulford Dayton was born in St. Lawrence county, N. Y., June 20th 1835, and died at Cincinnati, Ohio, May 18th, 1891. From what we know of him we may safely say that in his last thoughts the Army of the Tennessee held the foremost place. He was a good soldier and a good citizen, a true friend and an agreeable companion. He was easily the gayest of the gay, wherever he was. He was an agreeable companion in the field, "where life comes close to nature," and he was an agreeable companion here in "God's country," surrounded by the comforts of civilization. His agreeable nature did not depend upon the accessories of civilization. He was gay, pleasant and agreeable when there were only "wood and water." His was a warm hand to grasp, and his hand was warm and his grasp firm 'because his heart was full of rich, warm, true blood. "Sunshine was he in the winter day, And in the midsummer coolness and shade." Farewell, dear, gallant comrade! AUGUSTUS JACOBSON, E. C. DAWES, CORNELIUS CADLE, Committee. |