THE NATION and THE SOLDIER, BY George R. Peck. The Nation and The Soldier. AN ORATION Delivered before the Indiana Commandery of the Military Order of the Lo}'al Legion of the United States, at Indianapolis, July 4, 1890. By ^(.^<- GEORGE r! peck. TOPEKA: KANSAS PUBLISHING HOUSE. 1890. JU:IA^4. ipfe-. Jlv^f. i^L . '09 T36 THE NATION AND THE SOLDIER. Companions, Ladies and Gentlemen: From the distant AVest, the liistoric, fruitful and now peaceful fields of our first civic strife, I bring you a salutation and a greeting. Tlie day and the occasion are happily mated. From immemo- rial times, men who have borne arms have en- joyed a certain distinction; the tribute that human nature yields to those who have played the big stakes of life and death. Responsive to, or per- haps created by, this sentiment, is the tendency of those who have been in the stress and rigor of the game, to look back with a feeling which is partly love, and partly pride, on the old days — and the old cause. It matters little that many seasons have passed since arms were stacked; nor that we who were young and gay, have felt the frost in our joints and on youthful forms the rust of the implacable years. The soldier must not question fate. This much is ours: to know, that if eyes beam some- what less brightly and heads reveal the gray au- tumnal touch, the things that once were dear are precious yet, and tlie faitli of other clays Las not departed. Tliis is a holy day; but surely we may be })ar- doned if while we remember that it means a na- tion's birth, some of us shall recall that it means also A'icksburg's famous victory, and the river that flowed unvexed to the sea. Nor can a Union soldier be blamed if he remembers that once he kept the day on the field of Gettysburg, kno^ving at last that the Fourth of July was not a dream, but a living and majestic reality. Such memories as these, lingering fondly in the sol- dier's heart, are the true sanctions of this order to which we belong, and of CNcry organization in which the veterans of the war have o-athered themselves. In the due adjustment of rights and interests; the establishment of those great equities tliat mark the true relation of a citizen to his Government, the soldier of the Union has no right to claim tliat tlie Nation belongs to him. But he has a right to think that in a peculiar sense he belongs to the Nation. AVhatever weakness may dwell in his heart, whatever sorrows may darken liis life, whatever tem})tations have l)eeu too strong for his will to resist, nevertheless nothing can rob him of tlic dignity that belongs to every man who can say, '' I helped to save the United States of America, one and indivisible." The Loyal Legion signifies, to us at least, that loyalty is a virtue wliich should never go out of fashion. Love of country is not, and should not be, a sentiment that responds only to the bugle and the drum. It is indeed true that the finest im23ulses may lie dormant, waiting the call that shall transmute them into vital convictions. But yet it is also true that a nation is T)est endo\ved when it has the common every- day affecti(ni of its people, in peace as ^vell as in war. The people of the United States call themselves Americans, claiming the name of the continent to mark their aspirations and their destiny. But what is that ideal feeling we sometimes call "the American spirit"? Surely it is not a selfish lust of possession; the vulgar satisfaction of knowing that we inhabit an imperial domain, and that no one must trespass on wdiat w^e call our own. Some l)etter reason must be in our hearts, some truer feeling must inspire our lives, l)efoi-e we can rightly know ^vhat patriotism is. Even the brute loves its own jungle. The tiger will fight to the death for the greensward on wliich it has plaj^ed, or the spring at which it has quenched its thirst. Only men fight for a sentiment; only men give up their lives for the things they have not seen. Fields of cotton and fields of corn will grow under any sun that yields its compel- ling rays. The harvest cares not what sickle shall reap it. Nature is calmly indifferent; deal- ing out the rude justice of the seasons, and heeding not the hisses nor the gains. But men think ; they alone ha\e " that large discourse looking before and after" which is the real basis of moral responsibility. The true American loves not simply the United States, but that for which the United States stands. The American flag is something more than a harmonious blending of coh^rs. AVho has not felt the awe and mystery that dwell in holy emblems;! AVhat faith has not l)een (piickened by signs and symbols that represent those invisible and eternal things of Avbieh human lips can never rightly speaks The United States is greater in Avhat it means than in wliat it is. When the war was upon us, if territory had been all that was involved we could have settled the dispute, and ought to have set- tled it, l)y an agreed division. The household gods could have been parted; the fields and herds apportioned. There was room for Abraham and for Lot; but there Avas not room for two ideas that never could be one. The Saracen and the Frank never Idended, because they worshiped at different shrines; and North and South could only make a mockery of Union while one ^vas for free- dom and the other against it. History, when truly written, deals less with men than with ideas; less with the boundaries of empires than Avith customs, traditions, and faiths. We said we were fighting for the Union, and so we truly were; but up in the stars, if we had looked, we should liave seen that Union meant somethino; of infi- nitely more worth than farms and factories, or ships and custom-houses. The act which makes this day memorable derives its lustre, not from the fact that it established a Nation, but because it touched the true note to which a Nation's life should be set. The Declaration of Independence was not the casting off of one government and the setting up of another. It was a reconstruc- tion of the very idea of government; the asser- tion of doctrines which men had vaguely carried in their hearts, but had thought them too good to be true. I imagine they were surprised at their own audacity when they set their names to that heroic recital of wrongs and the illustrious declaration of rights which went with it. It is a peculiarity of the Anglo-Saxon race that it does not much incline to abstract specu- lation on matters of government, religion, or morals; but no people are so skillful in drawing up those great State papers which become land- marks of history. Such was Magna Charta; such were the acts and resolutions of that Puritan Parliament that brought an English King to the block; such was the great declaration of rights which John Somers in the name of all the estates of the realm hurled at the House of Stuart; such were the rude but comprehensive constitutions framed by the first comers to New England; and such was the Declaration of Independence which Thomas Jefferson wrote, and a people witli the English love of liberty in their veins sanctioned and inspired. There is in the history, the litera- ture, and in the very language of our race, a sort of divine compulsion to self-government. " We must be free or die who speak the tongue That Shakespeare spake ; the faith and morals hold Which Milton held." There is an insoluble mystery in the processes of historical development. We only know what apj)ears on the surface. We see the wave, but not the force that whitens its crest, and dashes it against the shoi*e. And yet, there is a meaning in it, as there is a meaning in the strange, tire- less and ceaseless motion of humanity. In some way we may be sure that nothing happens that ought to have been omitted from the drama of history. There is a right and a wrong; but God gathers them together and makes them serve a purpose too large for us to understand. No one knows, or cares to know, tlie names of those who died at Marathon; but Marathon itself, the glories that cluster round the story of that heroic day, are in our lives, common and prosaic as they seem. It is not onl>^ an alluring theory, but a truth, \\hich science has announced, that ever}'^ human being, by the law of heredity, is an epit- ome of all the generations whose blood is in his veins. In the truest sense, all the sacrifices of the past, the agonies, the sorrows and the tears, 9 were for us; and for us too, were the glories and the joys that tell how life may l)e won, even when it is lost. More than a century has passed since the Dec- laration of Independence was published. How stately and formal its sentences seem to us who have l)een through the furnace to keep them from being dishonored ! Is it indeed true that all men are created equal i Are life and liberty really so sacred as our fathers thought? Has time justified their lofty words, the brave God-speed with which they launched the bark that carried such precious freight? History will answer these questions; and your names will be upon the page. They pro- claimed self-evident truths; but alas! no truth ever yet marched far towards its goal without a struggle, and so the Fourth of July had to face the inevitable, not once, but twice; and you are the witnesses of its courage, its faith, and its triumph. In the rush and hurry of these busy days, and with the memories, sad and tragic, of our own contest fi'esh upon us, ^ve do not perhaps always do justice to the men who were the iirst apostles of liberty. Let us not vaunt ourselves, nor set our music to the highest key. AVe must not think because Appomattox was glorious, that Yorktowu was of little moment. A life is a life; and Lib- erty counts all her jewels of ecpial value. We trod a rugged path, but so did they who counted 10 not tlie years that were needed to l)riiig tlieni their deliverance. The Declaration of Independence is incompar- ably the greatest, wisest and clearest statement of liunian rights ever put upon paper. And it is a curious fact that neither the men who framed it nor their contemj)oraries were always success- ful when they put their hands to the pen. The Articles of Confederation Avere, from the first, a hopeless failure. Ten amendments to the Con- stitution were made almost immediately after its adoption, two shortly afterwards, and finally, as you kno^v too ^vell, three more were written in blood. Even now, there are many respects in which it could doubtless be improved. But the Declara- tion of Independence remains forever "one en- tire and perfect chrysolite;" and is confessedly the true gospel of our freedom, the true standard of American rights. In that great statement of the equality of men, is found the l^est medicine for national disease, the best balm for the hurts and bruises of the l)ody politic. It means equality of opportunity; a just share in the gifts of nature; a fair chance in the race of life, under laws that all have helped to make. The right to these things is inalienable. It can neither l»e taken away, nor voluntarily given up ; for the Dec- laration of Independence means that you can- not rightfully make your l^rother a slave even by his own consent. In short, this great 11 charter, in the lines and betAveen the lines, de- clares that the golden rule of legislation and government, like the golden rule of human con- duct, is the unselfish recognition of the rights of others. It is a high ideal; too high, perhaj)s, for the eighteenth or the nineteenth century, but not too high for the age that is coming, when the ashes of the dead shall blossom in hopes made real, and the blood of martyrs shall crim- son the flower that trutli sets in the wreath of the immortals. We are sixty millions of people. What an un- counted multitude of interests are at stake, and how hard it is to keep the strong and the weak, the rich and the poor, the ignorant and the wise, each in his own proper orbit; each in that har- monious relation to the other which is the aim of a government like ours. The sublimity of such a conception, the ideal perfectness to which it aspires, adds to the difficulty of attaining it. For neither the Declaration of Independence, nor golden rules, nor the teachings of the wise, nor the example of the good, have cleared men's hearts of the taint of selfishiness. We still think of ourselves first, of our section, our class, and the interest which lies nearest our own. The men who live by the mountains, and the men who live by the sea, imagine sometimes that God placed them tliere for the benefit only of those who dwell by their side. But the true idea of 12 this Nation is unity; not of States alone, but of interests, so tliat each shall be for all, and all for each. The shi^^s that sail to far-off shores, the fields that give their increase, the mines tilled with the Avealth whicli Nature tried to hide, — what are these but the gifts which under God's la^v no man can hold unto himself alone i We are trustees for each other; and in the light of those great words which make the Declaration immortal, how shall an American citizen forget his fello\vs who are heirs to every right he calls his own i "And the eye cannot say to the hand, I have no need of thee; nor again the head to the feet, I have no need of you." Every hour hath its peril; and the peril of this hour is forgetfulness. It is for you more than for any one else — soldiers who made the color of the sky more beautiful by wearing it on your breasts — it is for you who did not forget the^i^ to see that this Nation does not forget now. Rufus Choate, with rare but unhappy felicity of speech, once spoke of "tlie glittering and sounding generalities which make up the Decla- ration of Independence." But the world discov- ered tluit they were something more, when the pen of Abraham Lincoln graved them on the dusky palms of four millions of slaves. The les- son of that act, and of every act which has a heart in it, is that always an opportiuiity is wait- ing to make life sweeter by making it freer. Tlie problem is, how to adjust the clashing in- terests of men, so that each shall have an equal chance; so that selfishness shall see that it stands in its own light; so that those who are in the front shall help those who linger, and they who are slow of foot shall (piicken their pace to the music that is sounding for all. This Nation stands dedicated to liberty, to justice, and to that impersonal representative of both — Law. Put the Declaration of Independence into every statute, and our National polity will glow with some- thing of that brightness that shines in the faces of men when the Sermon on the Mount is re- vealed to their listening^ hearts. Statesmanship is said to be a practical art, and so indeed it is; Init I wish that cabinets and courts and senates would always remember, that in this Nation nothing can be of such practical importance as the inviolate observance of the principles which make this day all that it is. Statesmen should learn, and the people them- selves should not forget, that truth never yet lost any of its l^eauty when crystallized into law. All that we knoAv of what is called progress in this world consists of getting ideals incorporated into the lives of men and of nations; of clothing sen- timent in the flesh and blood of the actual; of making things spiritual manifest in things real. Back of the flower is the sense of beauty that makes its colors pleasant to the eye ; l)ack of u every noble utterance is tlie moral sentiment that attests its truth. If you would know the value of the Declaration of Independence, think ^vhat our lives would be if we had never felt its in spiring touch, nor known \vhat meanings are re- vealed in its pregnant sentences. The men ^vho signed it, and the men who fought for it, had us in their minds as well as themselves, and in the truest sense they knew that the stamping of paper and the taxing of tea were of little consequence comj)ared ^^'\th. the I'iglit which you and I enjoy of l)eing masters of ourselves, and of our own in- heritance. Do you think they could have carried on a seven-years war if they had not felt that they were lighting the battles of the future ( Men will dare more for rights than for money, or prop- erty, or land; for it is and always must be true, that the things which are most precious are those which are not seen, nor bought, nor sold. Fellow- soldiers, it is not wrong for you to be proud that some day history will link your names with the names of those who saluted the daAvn of American liberty. The time will come when men ^vill little heed the years that separate the age of Washington from the age of Lincoln. They Avill rightly think that time is not important when a great cause is in the balance, and that centuries are but breathino;- spells when liberty leads the column. What does it signify whether a soldier fouglit at 15 Salamis, or at Nasel^y? — at Saratoga, or at Sbiloli? All are in the ranks of the immortah Time names her classics, and sets the seal of glory on every Held \\diere men have died for men. The soldier is bnt a pawn npon the board. And yet how gl-eat are the issues of ^var. If the battle of Toui's had gone the other way, the sign of the camel -driver would have blazed all over western Europe. A hundred fields where Union soldiers fought would have been lost but for their enduring faith; and if lost, our cause, which was surely the holiest ever yet submitted to arms, might have gone into the sad and dreary list that history writes down as failures. Failure: it is hard to think now that by any possibility it could have come to us. And yet, hoAv many weary days there were when the issue trembled and hopes were dim, and even faith was chast- ened with tears. We shall not forget in this life, the eager and exultant prophecies of defeat wafted across the sea, from those who thought that crowns and coronets could go on prospering, but that a government with liberty in it must perish. Military critics, wise in their generation, said victory was impossible; and skillful pens were busy writing down the fate of the great republic. But they forgot God. And they for- got the men, who, standing in the ranks, had taught their very bayonets to believe that this Nation could not die. 16 It is not for ns to lightly speak of tliose who folloAved another flag than ours. Some there were, nearly all, perhaps, who thought they did God's service. And yet, they were wrong; blind, deaf, deceived, and betrayed l)y those who knew the light, but loved the darkness. We call them rel)els; T)ut let us not forget that they were our rebels. They were our countrymen; bone of our bone, and flesh of our flesh, and every soldier of the Union down in his heart is murmuring the prayer, "What God hath joined together, let not man put asunder." And we, w^lio wore the blue, must forever, and for always, stand fast by the Declaration of Independence, and by the glory that was in it when Cornwallis dipped the standard of England to the banner of AVashington, and when Lee lowered the wretched stars and bars to that flag which was Grant's and yours and mine. It is the flag of the present and the future; the one in many, the many in one; the sign of victory to those who fought for it, and of grace, mercy and peace for those \\\\o blindly fought against it. A quarter of a century has flown since we ^vere mustered out. Hate, anger, and passion have gone from our hearts. The flres have sunk into ashes; the lights are t>ut; the martial hymns have faded into an echo. I am sure I speak the sentiment of every Union soldier when I repeat the language of our old commander, "Let us have peace," and of him who carried the burden of 17 the years: "We are not enemies, bnt friends; we must not be enemies. Thougli passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affec- tion. The mystic chords of memory stretching from every battle-fiehl and patriot grave to every living heart and hearth -stone will yet swell the chorus of the Union when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature." The prophecy of Lincoln is coming true. The better angels are here; and in every place where soldiers give the hand and the heart with it, to those who turn their eyes to the front, and bow their heads to the august future, and its noble promises. Only this ^ve ask — and we ask it with an insistence that will not gro^v less with years: Let us be friends indeed; let us feel that the past is irrevocable, but not therefore wasted. Let us join hands and go forward to the duty that lies nearest. Something I might say, if it were right to say anything, of a somewhat too effusive joy that marked a recent tribute to a great soldier, who gave his name and his sword to a cause we l)e- lieve to be unspeakably wrong. It is not for us to decide how far military skill or personal char- acter can lessen the guilt of treason. Bnt of this, oh! loyal hearts, be sure: neither l)ronze nor marble can en