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 OF THE 
 
 MEMORIAL HALL, 
 
 AT 
 
 HARVARD COLLEGE, 
 
 OCTOBER 6, 1870 
 
 BY E; R. HOAR. 
 
 h 
 
 TOLMAN & WHITE, PRINTERS, 221 WASHINGTON ST.. BOSTON. 
 
 1870. 
 
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 <BS? 
 
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JP 
 
 ADDRESS 
 
 AT THE 
 
 LAYING OF THE CORNER STONE 
 
 OF THE 
 
 MEMORIAL HALL, 
 
 AT 
 
 HARVARD COLLEGE, 
 
 OCTOBER 6, 1870. 
 
 BY E. R. HOAR. 
 
 TOLMAN & WHITE, PRINTERS, 221 WASHINGTON ST., BOSTON. 
 
 1870. 
 
U^°LI~11 
 
 [ no 
 
ADDEESS 
 
 I have been asked by the Committee having charge of 
 these ceremonies to say a few words on this occasion. 
 
 It has seemed srood to the Alumni and friends of Harvard 
 College to erect a durable memorial to those of her sons 
 who fell in the service of their country in the war of the 
 rebellion. An impressive and fitting tribute to their worth 
 has been already provided in the two volumes of Harvard 
 Memorial Biographies ; books which take a high place in 
 heroic literature, and which are read with inino'led tears and 
 thanksgiving. 
 
 In 18G5, at the close of the war, with solemn pomp, and 
 stately procession, with prayer and praises to God, and 
 music and eloquence, and splendid poetry, the College 
 welcomed her returning sons, who came back from many a 
 hard-fought field and blood-stained deck with the wreath of 
 victory on their brows ; and crowned them with her bene- 
 diction. Xo one whose privilege it was to witness it will 
 ever forget that touching spectacle, when the long proces- 
 sion of the Alumni opened to receive the surviving soldiers, 
 in whose ranks Colonel and sergeant, Admiral and surgeon, 
 Major-General and private marched indiscriminately to- 
 
gether as classmates. Each had his own honorable distinc- 
 tion of service, of danger or hardship, prison or hospital, 
 mutilation or wounds ; while to all alike belonged the com- 
 mon glory, that the country was saved, and they had helped 
 to save her. In that commemoration the language of pride 
 and gratitude seemed to be well-uisrh exhausted ; and with 
 welcome and praises to the living were mingled tender and 
 reverent memories of the dead. 
 
 But to those who went to the war, and did not return ; 
 who had paid in full the great price of the nation's safety ; 
 who had only trusted, and believed in, and died for that 
 future of peace and freedom which they were never to see, 
 but which we live to share and enjoy ; it was felt that 
 something more was due. They had — 
 
 " crossed the tide 
 " Of life, where it was narrow, deep, and clear." 
 
 They had passed beyond pageants and eulogies ; and had 
 gone without knowing how we loved and honored them. 
 A monument in the college grounds, first suggested by 
 President Walker, was soon proposed ; and the proposi- 
 tion met with general favor. But the question remained, 
 on what form of monumental structure should their names 
 be most fitly inscribed, and how should it be made to bear 
 the most durable and impressive record of their virtues. 
 The practical answer found is the occasion of our assembling 
 here to-day. 
 
This is not a place of sepulture. In many a city and vil- 
 lage funeral rites have been solemnly performed over their 
 bodies ; and the places where they repose have in many 
 cases been marked by votive tablet or monumental stone. 
 This is not indeed true of all. Thucydides tells us that 
 the Athenians always buried in the public sepulchre, in the 
 fairest suburb of the city, those who had fallen in the wars, 
 except those who fell at Marathon ; who, as a higher dis- 
 tinction, were buried where they fell. Their valor had 
 saved Greece in its stru<™*le for national existence. There 
 are sons of Harvard, who, in the war which involved a 
 similar issue, have found such graves. None have had 
 more honorable burial. 
 
 " Where should the soldier rest, but where he fell? " 
 
 It is not with funeral ceremonies then that we have any 
 longer to do. The war, with its actors and its victims, its suf- 
 ferings and terrible losses, and its grand results, is passing 
 into Historv. There is nothing here to remind us of wounds 
 and carnage, of the frail and perishing body. Our memo- 
 rial is of the unconquerable spirit ; of the heroic character ; 
 of immortal deeds. And we therefore gladly accept the 
 opportunity that offers to fix the names and memory of our 
 young heroes, in the most effective manner, among the per- 
 manent influences of this institution. 
 
 Harvard College appears to be entering on a new era. 
 With increasing numbers, and enlarged resources, with 
 
(3 
 
 plans for a higher and more liberal education, its friends 
 look hopefully forward to wider relations and a larger use- 
 fulness. Its Halls are now insufficient for its wants ; and 
 buildings for the commencement exercises, for all its public 
 days and services, and for meetings of the Alumni, have be- 
 come a pressing necessity. To meet this want, it has been 
 determined to make the monument which we erect assume 
 the form of a Memorial Hall ; the largest and stateliest 
 building belonging to the University ; of impressive archi- 
 tecture ; of solid and enduring fabric ; prepared to stand 
 for centuries. One part of it is to have the form and uses 
 of a theatre, where the honors of the University shall be 
 conferred, and from which our Alma Mater shall year by 
 year send forth the ever lengthening procession of the youth 
 whom she has trained to a truer manhood. On the other 
 side is to rise the Hall of the Alumni, adorned with por- 
 traits and statues of the benefactors who have endowed this 
 ancient seat of learning, and of those who have made its 
 name illustrious ; where, for unnumbered years, her sons 
 shall from time to time assemble, to renew the recollections 
 of youth, to strengthen the ties of friendship, to rejoice in 
 the prosperity of their common mother, and to bring their 
 honors and their fame to adorn her fair brow. While be- 
 tween them, the entrance to both, the central figure, giving 
 name and character to the whole pile, shall stand the monu- 
 mental hall; lending dignity to academic ceremonies, and a 
 loftier inspiration to every festival; beautiful, as we hope, 
 
by the art of the sculptor, but grand and majestic, as we 
 know, with immortal names and heroic memories ; the 
 Heart of the college ; around which shall cluster all her 
 proudest and dearest associations ; a record, a memorial, — 
 but also an admonition to duty, a perpetual incentive to 
 noble effort. 
 
 The execution of this plan required a large expenditure, 
 and you have heard what a liberal response has been made 
 to the call for money. The rich have given of their wealth, 
 and the poor of their poverty. Few subscriptions have ever 
 been raised that were so generally and so truly the tribute 
 of affection. Means are already secured which, in the judg- 
 ment of the committee in charge of the enterprise, will 
 warrant a beginning ; they cannot doubt that all which are 
 needed will yet be supplied ; and now we have come to- 
 gether to witness the la vino- of the corner stone. 
 
 I do not think a great deal of talking about what we are 
 going to do is usually commendable. But the laying of 
 corner stones is in some sort the business of a University — 
 and it is never inopportune for the friends of this institution 
 to consider upon what foundations Harvard College desires 
 to build. Its founders sought to establish a Christian Com- 
 monwealth, for the service of God, and the highest good of 
 man. The two mottoes, successively placed upon the col- 
 lege seal, — "Veritas" — and "Christo et ecclesiae" — indi- 
 cate their idea of the standard and test of character, and 
 of the uses of life. To be true in thought, true in act, true 
 
8 
 
 to conviction, true to duty, this is the first lesson which 
 Harvard seeks to teach. And next the lesson of public 
 duty ; the devotion of all faculties, and powers, and posses- 
 sions, to the service of mankind. She would consecrate all 
 her sons to him w T ho served and died for men ; and enrol 
 them in that great company of the faithful, whose confessors 
 and martyrs have followed in the same footsteps. The ideal 
 which she would set before them is found in that lofty senti- 
 ment of the first sentence of the " assembly's catechism," 
 than which a nobler statement of man's duty and destiny was 
 never penned, — " The chief end of man is to glorify God, 
 and enjoy Him forever." And so the stately building which 
 w r e raise shall stand to attest for this college the belief that 
 men were not placed on the earth for their own pleasure, 
 not merely to buy and sell and get gain, to live in fair 
 houses and occup3 r high places, to be clothed in purple and 
 fine linen and fare sumptuously every day, to be flattered 
 and pampered and served ; not even to store their minds 
 with knowledge, and enrich them with the treasures of let- 
 ters and of art ; but to live bravely and uprightly, walking 
 in the ways of truth and duty. Our wisest scholars w T ere 
 those who earliest and best learned this noblest lesson ; and 
 we inscribe their names in our highest place of honor, to be 
 the example and stimulus of all who shall come after them. 
 The object of education is to make men ; and the noblest 
 manhood was by them illustrated. 
 
 Let it not be thought that we claim any monopoly of 
 
9 
 
 glory, or are unmindful of the just renown of others. 
 Other colleges have clone, it may be, as worthily and well ; 
 and they too have, or will have, their monuments and me- 
 morials. I am glad to know that monuments to the soldiers 
 are going up all over the country. In the gigantic struggle 
 in which the nation was engaged, the share which any single 
 class, or community, or society? or institution, could con- 
 tribute to the whole result, must appear small. America 
 has proved herself rich in heroes ; and like so many of her 
 other blessings, God seems to have sent them broadcast over 
 all her soil. From many a lonely valley and mountain farm, 
 from factory and workbench, from the marts of trade, the 
 miner's gallery, and the deck of the fisherman, myriads of 
 the brave and faithful came forth, willing to die that their 
 country might live. It is still a satisfaction to know that 
 the University, which is the oldest in the land, and which 
 aims to keep step with its advancing greatness, has not been 
 behind her sister colleges in patriotic zeal, or in the number 
 or quality of her contributions to the public service. And 
 it is a subject of congratulation to all who wish the influence 
 of Harvard to become more extended, and her relations be- 
 yond Massachusetts and New England to grow wider and 
 stronger, that in the honors we pay to our brothers who 
 have fallen in the w r ar, we create a new bond of sympathy, 
 connecting the college with every state, and city, and neigh- 
 borhood, — almost with every village and hamlet, from the 
 Atlantic to the Pacific coast. 
 
10 
 
 There were about six hundred of our alumni who served 
 in the war, exclusive of those belonging to the professional 
 schools. Of these, ninety-six died before the war was 
 over; twenty-seven of them by disease, and sixty-nine by 
 violence, of whom sixty-three fell in battle. None of the 
 great leaders of the war are to be found upon our list — 
 neither Grant, nor Sherman, nor Sheridan, nor Thomas, nor 
 Meade, nor Schofield, nor McPherson. But there were 
 many in whom the chiefs confided ; and of whom they spoke 
 words of high praise. And we may say of them that there 
 were none who sought ambitiously for high commands for 
 which they were unfit ; and none, I believe, who were ever 
 suspected of making military commands a source of profit 
 or personal advantage. Yet, though coming from civil life, 
 without military training or experience, there were those 
 among them who rose to high rank, and whom nothing but 
 wounds or death prevented from taking the foremost places. 
 " I do not think there was a quality," said Sheridan, "which 
 I could have added to Lowell. lie was the perfection of a 
 man and a soldier." 
 
 Our fallen brothers served in the troops of ten States ; 
 and from Gettysburg and Antietam to Port Hudson, and 
 Pittsburg Landing, and Lookout Mountain, and Fort Wag- 
 ner, they fought and fell on all the bloodiest fields of the 
 Avar. No memorial more truly National and representative 
 will probably be erected, as I think none has been projected 
 on a grander scale, than that which we inaugurate to-day. 
 
11 
 
 In any capacity where service was honorable or useful, they 
 were ready to render it ; for it was service and not distinction 
 to which they aspired. " Illinois is greatly in need of troops. 
 Recruiting goes on slowy. I feel that the call which the 
 Governor made last week was to me," wrote Henry Ware 
 Hall to his father in the summer of 1861. And in November 
 following, "I never thought of going otherwise than as a 
 private, until the position was offered me without my seek- 
 ing it." He fell at the head of an assaulting column, his 
 body pierced by eleven balls. "The country needs men, 
 not officers," said Ezra Martin Tebbets, the accomplished 
 engineer, one of the first scholars of the class of 1859, when 
 he enlisted for the second time as a private in the 5th Iowa 
 Cavalry, in 1864. 
 
 The impulse which moved the American people in the 
 great uprising of 1861, and which sustained them through 
 the long struggle, was chiefly an intense, I might almost 
 say, an inconsiderate patriotism. The integrity of the 
 Union, the flag, which traitors had dared to insult, the sup- 
 port of the Government, were most in their thoughts. 
 They were proud of their country, of its splendid growth, 
 its unequalled prosperity, its freedom, its equality of privi- 
 leges, even, I am afraid, of its size. In the words of the 
 Greek orator, " It was for such a country then that these 
 men, nobly resolving not to have it taken from them, fell 
 fighting." But it was the felicity of the nation that its 
 cause commanded the support of the thought, the intelligent 
 
12 
 
 conviction of the people, and that its victory was the victory 
 of ideas, as well as of material resources, and patriotic 
 ardor. Our armies were not an ignorant mob, as some 
 European gentlemen imagined, with passions stimulated to 
 madness ; nor were they the hordes of the mercenary and 
 the brutal. As largely infused into them as into the com- 
 munity itself, were the graduates and students of our col- 
 leges, the artists, engineers, clergymen, lawyers, physicians, 
 teachers, professors, inventors, scholars, authors, editors, the 
 refined, the well-instructed, and the thoughtful. They knew 
 what they were fi<rbtiii£ for. Their vollies and charges car- 
 ried with them the judgments of John Marshall, the reply of 
 Webster to Hayne, the truths of the declaration of indepen- 
 dence. Our brothers who died had everything to make life 
 dear and desirable. They belonged to the most favored class- 
 es, if we have such in America; for those are most favored 
 who enjoy opportunities of the most complete and varied cul- 
 ture, and the development of the most perfect manhood. Not 
 thoughtlessly or recklessly, not from restlessness or ambi- 
 tion, but modestly, considerately, counting the cost, they 
 cheerfully put in peril for what they knew was the cause of 
 freedom and civilization, ease, wealth, pleasure, home, 
 friends, the prospect of success and honor, and "all the 
 immeasurable opportunities of life." 
 
 Better than any poor words of mine, permit me to read 
 to you in confirmation of this statement a few words of 
 theirs ; though I fear to begin to quote, since it is so hard 
 to tind where to stop. 
 
13 
 James Jackson Lowell wrote thus to his classmates : 
 
 "When the class meets in years to come, and honors its 
 statesmen and judges, its divines and doctors, let also the 
 score who went to fight for their country be remembered, 
 and let not those who never returned be forgotten : — those 
 who died for the cause, not of the Constitution and the 
 laws, — a superficial cause, the Rebels have now the same, — 
 but of civilization and law, and the self-restrained freedom 
 which is their result. As the Greeks at Marathon and 
 Salami's, Charles Martel and the Franks at Tours, and the 
 Germans at the Danube, saved Europe from Asiatic barba- 
 rism, so avc, at places to be famous in future times, shall 
 have saved America from a similar tide of barbarism ; and 
 avc may hope to be purified and strengthened ourselves by 
 the struo-o-le." 
 
 Colonel Porter, of Niagara, begins his will in these 
 words : — and Avhere in history will you find a nobler utter- 
 ance ? 
 
 " I, Peter Augustus Porter, being of sound mind, do de- 
 clare this to be my last will and testament : feeling, to its 
 full extent, the probability that I may not return from the 
 path of duty on which I have entered. If it please God 
 that it be so, I can say, witlTtruth, that I have entered on 
 the course of danger with no ambitious aspirations, nor 
 with the idea that I am fitted, by nature . or experience, to 
 be of any important service to the government ; but in obe- 
 dience to the call of duty, demanding eA r ery citizen to con- 
 tribute what he could, in means, labor, or life, to sustain 
 the government of his country, — a sacrifice made the more 
 willingly by me, Avhen I consider Iioav singularly benefited 
 
14 
 
 I have been by the institutions of the land, and that, up to 
 this time, all the blessings of life have been showered upon 
 me beyond what usually falls to the lot of man." 
 
 Our beautiful and brave ! Truly with a great price were 
 our peace and freedom bought ! God help us to keep the 
 resolve that it shall not have been paid in vain ! 
 
 I have recentlv seen a letter from Berlin, in which it was 
 sorrowfully said, — " We lose in our privates the flower of 
 the nation ; while on the French side the educated classes 
 do not serve in the army." Perhaps it would be better for 
 France to-day if they did ! Perhaps it would be well for 
 her future to have no other wars than those in which they 
 will ! 
 
 Who can deny that those we seek to commemorate were 
 *' the flower of the nation?" " And surely," said Pericles, 
 in his funeral oration, " the palm of magnanimity may well 
 be awarded to those, whom the liveliest appreciation of the 
 hardships of war and the pleasures of peace fails to lure 
 from the perilous path of honor to the charms of ease." 
 
 "Yet among these men there was not one whom the pros- 
 pect of a prolonged enjoyment ot wealth lured to play the 
 coward ; not one whom the hope whispered by poverty, the 
 hope of some day exchanging penury for affluence, tempted 
 to quail before the hour of peril." 
 
 "Yes, they jointly offered their lives, and were repaid by 
 that glory that can never die, and by the most honorable of 
 Tombs, not that wherein they lie, but that wherein their 
 
15 
 
 fame is treasured in everlasting honor, refreshed by every 
 incident, either of action or debate, that stirs its remem- 
 brance." 
 
 To 3'ou, the comrades of the fallen, who shared their 
 dangers and their devotion, it most fitly belongs to take the 
 first place in paying this tribute to their memory. Every 
 honor we render to the dead is rightfully yours also. Long 
 may you live to be repaid by the affection and gratitude of 
 your countrymen ; and to be welcomed, with ever renewed 
 admiration and love, to the college which will treasure your 
 fame. Yet your best recompense will be your own knowl- 
 edge of what you have done. The work is greater than 
 any reward. 
 
 We have layed the corner stone of the Memorial Hall. 
 The stately building which shall rise upon it will stand, we 
 trust, for centuries. It will show what those who reared it 
 thought worthy of lasting remembrance. It will speak with 
 impressive voice to successive generations. To us and our 
 successors it will address the solemn question, "What are 
 you doing, or striving to do, for your country and mankind? 
 These men gave their lives." In everv hour of weariness 
 or despondency, its marble record of such lives and deaths 
 shall afford encouragement to manly living, and strength for 
 high endeavor, — 
 
 "Giving to Memory help, when she would weave 
 " A crown for Hope." 
 
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 
 
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