MX 
 
63d Congress / 
 
 SENATE 
 
 f Document 
 \ No 491 
 
 MEMORIAL DAY ADDRESS 
 
 E 642 
 
 .C58 ^"^ 
 
 Copy 1 
 
 ADDRESS 
 
 DELIVERED BY 
 
 HON. MOSES E. CLAPP 
 
 UNITED STATES SENATOR FROM MINNESOTA 
 
 MEMORIAL EXERCISES HELD AT GETTYSBURG, PA. 
 ON MAY 30, 1914 
 
 Col 
 
 PRESENTED BY MR. KENYON 
 JUNE 12, 1914.— Ordered to be printed 
 
 WASHINGTON 
 1914 
 
•C58 
 
 » V 
 
 0. OF D, 
 Jl'N 22 1314 
 

 
 MEMORIAL DAY ADDRESS. 
 
 ADDRESS DELIVERED BY HON. MOSES E. CLAPP AT GETTYSBURG. PA., 
 
 MAY 30. 1914. 
 
 Making due allowance for the manifest exaggeration of ancient 
 history, the Civil War was without doubt the most gigantic strug- 
 gle the world has ever witnessed. Viewed in the light of its relation 
 to history, it stands without a parallel. Christianity brought into 
 the current of human activities a force which, in the chain of 
 sequence, was destined to sooner or later lead man to the goal of 
 free government. But whether, when this goal was reached, there 
 would be found in the association thus developed, in a case where 
 the element of fear of a common enemy was wanting, that cohesive 
 force necessary to resist the claim of the right of withdrawal from 
 the association, when such claim was made by a large body of its 
 citizens, was perhaps too problematical to class the result of the test 
 as a link in the chain of historic sequence. That test was the funda- 
 mental involved in the Civil War, and in the light of that fact 
 it may well be said that Gettysburg beyond question was the most 
 important battle in the annals of warfare. It was the turning 
 point in a struggle w^hich in turn ^vas the turning point in the life 
 of a nation, and that nation undoubtedly is in turn destined to be 
 the instrumentality through which, next to the transition fi-om 
 paganism to Christianity, the greatest transition in human history 
 is to be accomplished, viz, the transfer of human energy involved in 
 the transition from war to peace. 
 
 For centuries war was the rule and peace the exception; wars 
 waged in part to maintain the power of sovereignty, but more often 
 waged in the spirit of conquest to add to its dominion. During 
 those centuries that impersonal spirit which sought to dominate 
 humanity for its own aggi-andizement utilized the human force 
 upon the field of battle, and as man approached the point where war 
 was destined to be the exception and peace the rule this human 
 energy which had been exploited in war naturally turned to the 
 more peaceful field of industrial activities. But the spirit which 
 had exploited mankind through the centuries in war did not itself 
 cease to exist as peace came to be the rule and war the exception. 
 We find it to-day seeking to establish in the activities of industrial 
 life that dominion which it finally lost upon the battle field, and if 
 this Eepublic has any mission in history more than to give to the 
 world something of 'the radiated spirit of free government that 
 mission is to meet this new condition and develop that industrial 
 justice which must some day be the logical sequence of the political 
 
 3 
 
4 MEMORIAL DAY ADDRESS. 
 
 justice established by those who have gone before us, for somewhere 
 and at some time it will be the mission of free government — that is, 
 democracy — to develop industrial justice, for industrial justice is the 
 natural sequence of political justice. Whether that result in the 
 ultimate is the mission of this Republic time alone will tell, but that 
 we have entered the initial stage of the struggle looking to that 
 end is plain to anyone who studies the relation of cause and effect 
 developed through the force of natural law related to human 
 activities. 
 
 The spirit of power and dominion which for so many centuries 
 made the battle field the outlet for human energy and the graveyard 
 of humanity, while its goal was political powder, now, in its newer 
 struggle, it makes the power of inordinate wealth its goal, and the 
 unjust acquisition and unfair use of such wealth the instrumentali- 
 ties of the struggle by which to reach the goal of its ambition. 
 
 No nation can work out a great career without wealth. Wealth 
 is essential to a nation's development. While this is true, it is equally 
 true that the unjust acquisition of wealth and its unjust use con- 
 stitute the real menace to the spirit of free institutions. In other 
 words, as with most things, it depends upon whether it is made to 
 serve common welfare or permitted to play the role of master. 
 
 We can not too strongly emphasize the diiference between wealth 
 on the one hand and its improper acquisition and improper use on 
 the other. One is the ally as well as the natural product of the de- 
 velopment of free government, the other its deadliest foe; and the 
 failure to emphasize this difference has led to much confusion and 
 brought much unjust criticism upon those who have raised a warn- 
 ing voice but failed to make clear this difference, the difference be- 
 tween real service on the one hand and unjust dominion upon the 
 other. The improper acquisition and improper use of wealth in 
 some form lies behind every assault upon a people's welfare, whether 
 that welfare is considered from the viewpoint of the material, moral, 
 or political; and, in fact, in free government the material, moral, 
 and political welfare of a people are so interwoven that they may 
 well be grouped under the general designation of " welfare." 
 
 Under the old order of things the overlord, amid pomp and cere- 
 mony, received the tribute of his vassals, while the petit baron ac- 
 complished the same unjust result by descending upon the unwary 
 traveler, the difference in the unjust imposition being rather in the 
 pomp accompanying it than in the nature of the robbery itself. And 
 so to-day, the difference between the man who has fattened upon 
 special privilege and, so far as the unfair taking is concerned, has 
 violated a moral if not a civil law, and who now uses the fruits of 
 that violation to poison the source of information, to dwarf and 
 divert the spirit emanating from institutions of learning, and to 
 silence and appease the outraged sentiment by the gloved hand that 
 conceals a curse but seeks to show forth in the form of a supposed 
 benefaction, and the man of the underworld who thrives upon vice 
 and with his ill-gotten gains pollutes, locally and at its source, the 
 political activities which surround him, is largely the difference be- 
 tween the overlord and the petit baron of other clays. 
 
 This sinister force menaces free government at every point, and, 
 like a beleaguering army, sends forth its sappers and miners to pre- 
 pare the way for the assaulting columns. In the old struggle the 
 
MEMORIAL DAY ADDRESS. 5 
 
 weapons Avere the battle-ax and spear, and later the cannon and 
 musket, the scaffold and dungeon; while in this new struggle are the 
 glitter and glamour of wealth; its supposed power to withhold or 
 bestow benefactions; its dwarfing of courage and enslavement of 
 mind. Already we have in this country too many who feel that the 
 few should sit around the banquet board heaped so high that some 
 crumbs must fall, and the gathering of those crumbs be regarded as a 
 privilege bestowed upon the masses. There are too many who, in 
 fear and trembling, accept the crumbs, forgetful of the fact that 
 wealth is the product of the activities of all, although its gathering 
 may be the activities of the few ; and that the activities of all, being 
 the real source of the combined wealth of the country, to prevent 
 an inequitable and unjust assembling and unjust use of wealth in 
 the hands of the few, is the real problem, or, to paraphrase the expres- 
 sion of Lincoln, the real struggle of the ages is between those who 
 create and those who assimilate. 
 
 The so-called " captain of industry " who unites existing activities 
 and capitalizes the statutes, or who unites credit in the development 
 of new activities, does not create wealth; that is created by the ac- 
 tivities of all. Every overcapitalization, every combination, finds its 
 stock-market value not alone in the wealth created or contributed by 
 those who organize it, not alone in increased efficiency — for the 
 crushing of competition and establishment of monopoly does not 
 develop efficiency — but in their power to collect and the capacity of 
 the people to pay the tolls it expects to impose upon the people for 
 the privilege of using their own highw^ay, the highway of industrial 
 progress. We have too many who are forgetful of the fact that the 
 mailed hand that shows forth its purpose is far less dangerous than 
 the gloved hand which destroys while it conceals its purpose. And 
 yet there is a bright side to this picture, for more ancl more the 
 American people are aAvakening to a realization of their situation. 
 More and more they fear that intellectual slavery which is designed 
 to be and is the natural result of pretended benefactions which come 
 not in the form of restitution, but for the undoubted purpose of 
 stifling sentiment, dwarfing and diverting judgment, and enslaving 
 mentality. More and more the American people say : If we have not 
 schools, libraries, and hospitals enough, it is better that we build 
 them ourselves, that they may be ours; that in the sacrifice which 
 their building and maintenance involves we may quicken the spirit 
 of sacrifice and deepen the appreciation of its fruits, recognizing the 
 spirit of gratitude to that composite citizenship, ever ready and will- 
 ing to bear the burdens of a complex civilization, rather than in the 
 building and maintenance by the individual we may see the loss of 
 independence of spirit and a perverted sense of gratitude. 
 
 Schools, libraries, and hospitals, when built by the people, are the 
 visible marks of development, and the sacrifice involved serves as an 
 inspiration, but when built by the individual they are the visible 
 demonstration of the taking in excess of a fair equation and afford 
 just ground for suspicion, especially when made by those who seek 
 to thwart and evade the progressive spirit that lies behind govern- 
 mental control, or resisting the efforts of justice to enforce that spirit, 
 that the pretended benefaction is but an ill-concealed effort to appease 
 a just sense of resentment and to stifle that spirit which should con- 
 trol its activities, and if not to redistribute, at least to prevent in the 
 
6 MEMOEIAL DAY ADDRESS. 
 
 future the taking of the excess. More and more the American people 
 •are awakening to the concept of the thought in their relation to this 
 spirit that first unfairly takes and then unjustly uses, and to say to 
 it, "We do not want yours; we want ours." 
 
 The lesson of Gettysburg proves that a nation can survive civil 
 strife, for standing here to-day we may see in shadowy squadrons the 
 living hosts thai; met in battle here. We can see men marching down 
 into the valley of death with a dauntless courage that makes mockery 
 of fear ; again we hear the moan of the dying, the shout of the living. 
 We can hear again the sob of the widow and orphan, but we can not 
 forget that back of that battling host there was a spirit of patriotism 
 that subordinated self to the sense of service. While we all will agree 
 to-day that upon one side there was a mistaken judgment, none will 
 question but that both hosts were prompted by a spirit of unselfish 
 sacrifice, and in the mourning homes of that day. North and South, 
 the dark pall of grief that shadowed the heart of motherhood, widow- 
 hood, and childhood was pierced by one illuminating ray — the 
 thought that the sacrifice was for humanity. 
 
 Nations can survive the clash of arms, where achievement leaves 
 such a legacy of patriotic inspiration, but no nation can long sur- 
 vive such scenes as at Ludlow, where inordinate greed and desire 
 for unlimited power subordinates everything to its purpose and the 
 struggle leaves, not a legacy of patriotic inspiration, but rather one 
 of malignant hate and undying resentment. 
 
 The spectacle of the great strike at Homestead a few years ago 
 is a picture every American would gladly blot from the pages of 
 our country's history; but the wreck and havoc then wrought by 
 the hand of lawless force — deplorable as it was — is dwarfed almost 
 beyond the reach of vision when compared with the wreckage of 
 American independence of thought since wrought through intellec- 
 tual enslavement, by the use of the millions which a deluded public 
 paid as a tribute to false sentiment of industrial supremacy, and the 
 millions added through the questionable process of the capitaliza- 
 tion of a commercial greed, which, in the main, could only in the end 
 be realized upon by the destruction of competition and establish- 
 ment of monopoly. 
 
 We have no apology for lawless force, although it must be borne 
 in mind that every protest is related somewhere to the parent of 
 protests, oppression. A\niile lawless force should be deprecated, it 
 is no such menace to the spirit of free government as lawless wealth, 
 for lawdess force weakens itself in the very opposition which it de- 
 velops among the people, while with lawless wealth it is a part of its 
 purpose, the logic of its use, that it destroy opposition by con- 
 trolling activities, by diverting judgment and enslaving mentality. 
 It is not the mailed hand but the gloved hand that in all ages has 
 retarded human progress and is to-day the real menace to free 
 government. 
 
 It will not do for us as a people to content ourselves with the 
 thought that the sole mission of this Republic is to see itself reflected 
 in a rapidly developing republican spirit throughout the world. We 
 may well rejoice that such has been the result of the establishment of 
 this Republic, and every American may well feel a thrill of pride as 
 he contemplates a world-wide tendency to a transition from mon- 
 archy to republic. But we can not develop, nor even preserve, the 
 
MEMORIAL DAY ADDRESS. 7 
 
 spirit of our own institutions by simply basking in the sunlight of 
 a reflected effulgence, even though it may be traced to the influence 
 radiating from the Republic which we have established. 
 
 No nation ever fell before external forces until first weakened by 
 internal forces. In all ages a favorite instrument in the hands of 
 that power which enslaved and oppressed was the dazzling picture 
 of foreign conquest, ever so effectively employed to deaden the sensi- 
 bilities of a people to the wrong and oppression visited upon them. 
 Proud of our influence in the world-wide sphere of thought, purpose^ 
 and development, as we have a right to be, let us not make the mis- 
 take of those who have gone before, but realize that our mission in; 
 the world and our duty to the world, broad, grand, and splendid as 
 it may be, is secondary to our mission in the development of a true 
 democracy at home and a duty to ourselves in preserving our insti- 
 tutions from that same foe to which can be traced the wreck and ruins 
 of empire in the past. So, too, of our boasted, world-wide industrial! 
 triumph. It may appeal to our pride to be told that the products 
 of our industrial activity are to be found everywhere, indicating the 
 early coming of a world-wide industrial supremacy, but such pride 
 must not blind us to the deplorable condition prevailing at the great 
 centers of industry, and must not blind us to the fact of the awful 
 toll of life, misery, and human decadence such supremacy exacts. 
 We can not still the voice of protest, nor conceal the wreckage of 
 humanity in the reflection only of a world-wide industrial supremacy. 
 
 The first and all-important industrial triumph which we should 
 achieve is the triumph of industrial justice at home, and in con- 
 templating the reflected glory born of our republican institutions we 
 must not allow the sense of our mission to the world to blind us to 
 a sense of our duty to America. 
 
 In our struggle against this power, it will not do to yield to the 
 very instruments which it used so effectively in its resistance to the 
 'growth of political rights. Chief among these was the force of 
 tradition. At every step of human progress there has been a spirit 
 of Toryism which appealed to the sancitity of the past. That same 
 appeal is made to-day, the sacredness of tradition, and that, too, 
 in spite of the patent fact that every step of human progress has 
 ^been, and is, either the abandonment or the condemnation of that 
 which went before. Another favorite instrument in the hands of 
 wrong ever has been and is to-day an exhortation to revere what is 
 held up as a false concept of law, because in proportion as man can 
 be made to feel that there is some vague abstraction which is re- 
 sponsible for the burdens which he bears, he is, in a measure, recon- 
 ciled to the burden, because he is unable to trace it to its real author^ 
 
 Of course, there are some rules of civil conduct so long established^ 
 so plain of purpose, relating to the intercourse of man with man, as 
 to require no interpretation and have come to be recognized as fixed 
 rules of conduct, but in that sphere of activities where the rights of 
 a people are concerned ; in that struggle to prevent the unjust ac- 
 quisition through the unjust imposition of burdens upon all; in that 
 struggle to establish a real democracy, political and industrial; in 
 that eternal struggle between the past and present, involving as it 
 does growth of power in government to meet the spirit which would 
 subordinate government to the interests of the few; to assume that 
 we have inherited an infallible abstraction known as the " law," is 
 
O MEMOEIAL DAY ADDRESS. 
 
 illogical. In the sense of such an abstraction, as a fixed law, gov- 
 erning the ever new and varied phases of the struggle, there can be 
 no such thing as " government by law." Law for to-day may or 
 may not be law for to-morrow. From the very nature of things, in 
 this sense, government must be government by man, for in the sense 
 that there is somewhere a force, an abstraction called "law," disasso- 
 ciated from man acting in the twilight zone of discretion, in the 
 making and administration of rules, there never was and never will 
 be such a thing as " government by law." 
 
 From the moment when a legislative policy is a mere shadowy, 
 undeveloped concept in the brain of some man, until that policy 
 has been wrought into legislation, and again worked out through 
 judicial construction, and again through the activities of admin- 
 istrative function to the point where some one standing before the 
 bar of justice is directed to go hence acquit or receives a sentence 
 imposing a penalty, at every step it is the result of some man's 
 decision, largely free to adopt one course or the other, and acting 
 all the time within that twilight zone of discretion wherein at one 
 extreme a court may solemnly read into a statute words which a 
 legislature has just as solemnly refused to put in the statute to the 
 other extreme where a mere Jbailiff can harden or soften the per- 
 sonal comfort of the individual committed to his care under sentence 
 of the court. 
 
 We must, therefore, realize that where there is a wrong, where 
 there is an injustice, there is a human, not an abstract responsibility 
 for such wrong or injustice. There is no slavery so abject as 
 the slavery of fetichism, the blind worship of an abstraction. It 
 Was an abstraction, the claim of monarchy, of the divine right to 
 rule, that so long held the human mind fettered and enslaved; and 
 it was only as man began to unmask this fetich of royalty and saw 
 the human, saw that there was nothing but a human exercising the 
 power of wrong and oppression, that he grasped the broad concept 
 of the relation of man to man and caught the vision of that equa- 
 tion of human rights which substitutes justice in behalf of all for 
 the prestige of an abstraction, which has always been the weapon of 
 the few. So we can not emphasize too strongly in this struggle 
 the necessity for looking back and behind every wrong to discover 
 the human force that is responsible for that wrong. 
 
 We must, of course, have due regard for law and ever seek to cure 
 its miscarriage through orderly methods; still, we must recognize 
 that the principle of justice is the only abstraction to reverence, and 
 for every wrong committed and every unjust burden imposed, we 
 must trace it to the human agency that is responsible for it, be- 
 cause it is only in proportion as we disillusionize the abstraction and 
 see the human behind the injustice and wrong that we awaken to the 
 sense of the imposition and seek a remedy for its abatement. Law 
 there is, and must be, but it is that law worked out through the will 
 and purpose of fallible man acting, in the main, as a self-determining 
 agent, and for a reverence for an abstraction we should substitute 
 a reverence for the principle of justice which, in turn, should be the 
 guiding spirit of those intrusted, for the time being, with the making 
 and enforcement of the rules of civil conduct, realizing that in free 
 government man is the instrument through which we seek to place. 
 
MEMORIAL DAY ADDRESS. 9 
 
 against the injustice of the few, that broad spirit of justice that 
 can only spring from an equally broad equation of humanity. 
 
 Although, perhaps, not strictly germane to this argument, we 
 should remember, on the other hand, that every benefaction which 
 comes from what we call "government," comes from that broad 
 equation of humanity of which government is the visible evidence 
 of the association, and that every material benefit involving appro- 
 priations must first come from the taxpayers themselves — the 
 people — and a just appreciation of this fact would lessen an ofttimes 
 thoughtless demand upon the resources of government, thoughtless 
 because we fail to realize that every dollar expended must first be 
 garnered from the taxpayers. 
 
 Another instrument, or, rather, slogan, of the old struggle was 
 the inhuman cry. " The survival of the fittest." This cry we still 
 bear echoed to-day; but we must remember it is the law of the 
 brute w^orld and had its place where everything was subordinated to 
 inordinate greed of power, and man was but the plaything of that 
 brutal spirit personified by such power. The very fundamental of 
 democracy is the right of all to exist. If all are to reap the benefits 
 of the human association called "' government," all must participate 
 in the making and administration of its policies. If we are to lift 
 ourselves above the level of animal life, if w^e are to recognize that 
 one man has a right which another man must respect, we must 
 abandon the cry which is the keynote of mere brute existence, " The 
 survival of the fittest." It has no place in free government except 
 so far as it relates to purely intellectual supremacy, and even in the 
 sphere of intellectual supremacy we must sometimes protect the 
 weak as against the strong. In the clash and conflict of thoughts 
 and ideas, that which has been proved best by the only test this side 
 of Divine judgment, the ripened verdict of a people, must triumph 
 Civilization can not adjust itself to a principle, when applied to the 
 material world, to the right to the enjoyment of the comforts of life, 
 an axiom that is the dominant law of brute life and found its only 
 place in human activities while the brute instinct predominated. 
 
 The remedy for industrial injustice must be found in the genesis 
 of man's struggle for political justice. He first awakened to the 
 thought that the glitter and glamour of royalty w^as unreal, and then 
 to the thought that no man, no truly human being was ever good 
 enough to be the self-constituted guardian of the welfare of another ; 
 then to the thought which was the real maiiLspring of progress toward 
 civil liberty, viz, that man Avas not made to be laid as a sacrifice on 
 the altar of royal ambition; and then he grasped the thought that 
 even the moat-protected parapet was powerless to stay God's eternal 
 purpose of justice, wrought out through human sacrifice, and then it 
 blossomed forth into free government in the realization that common 
 welfare should be the goal of human association and that humanity, 
 in the concrete, is able, under Divine guidance, to develop its own 
 instrumentalities. And so in this new struggle to meet error we 
 must uncover error. We must no longer be dazzled by the glamour 
 of wealth ; Ave must recognize that in this straggle it is man for man ; 
 w^e must recognize that no man is good enough to be permitted to 
 constitute himself the guardian of public welfare ; we must reco^ize 
 that man was no more created to serve as a sacrifice to inordmate 
 
 I 
 
10 MEMORIAL DAY ADDRESS. 
 
 greed and unrestrained commercialism than he was created to serve 
 as a sacrifice to royal pomp and ambition; we must recognize that 
 buttressed wrong is to-day as powerless as granite parapet was in the 
 jiasLagainst the resistless purpose of a free people. For selfish greed 
 we miisrstibstittTfe patriotism and then we will discover that nian, in 
 the concrete, is just as capable of establishing and maintaining indus- 
 trial justice as he was in establishing and maintaining political jus- 
 tice; in other words, the establishment of real democracy. 
 
 The opponents of democracy assert that for the evils of democracy 
 we seek to apply more democracy. We should, however, distinguish 
 between the evils of a system, if "it h.as any, and those evils which are 
 foreign to it, and find lodgment there only through the instrumental- 
 ity of forces opposed to\,he system. The betrayal and perversion 
 of democracy is not the test of democracy. There is a vast difference 
 between democracy and hypocrisy, although the latter may seek to 
 masquerade as democracy. Democracy means government by the 
 people. Keal democracy either contains within itself the elements 
 of the solution of this problem or those who have laid do^yn their 
 lives in the effort to reach democracy have sacrificed in vain. We 
 can not believe this sacrifice has been in vain, for back of the spirit 
 of sacrifice planted in the breast of man there must have been a 
 divine purpose to the fruition of Avhich sacrifice was essential. 
 
 Every great achievement has a dual existence. It lives related to 
 those who achieved. It may also live related to the great movements 
 of humanity, but it has often happened in the past that the flower of 
 a nation's manhood wrote into history some great achievement which, 
 as their achievement, became immortal ; but the fruit of the sacrifice 
 was lost by those for whom it was made, and, aside from the achieve- 
 ment showing forth the valor and patriotism of those who wrought 
 it. it has ceased to be of historic significance. 
 
 Gettysburg, as related to those who burned its name into the page 
 of history, will live forever. The achievement of those who, in their 
 victory here, made Gettysburg the turning point in a struggle which 
 involved a nation's life will remain immortal. That immortality 
 you and your comrades, living and dead, secured. It is yours, sa- 
 credly yours, and no betrayal of this legacy which we have inherited 
 can ever rob you of that crown of heroic valor, of unselfish patriot- 
 ism, the luster of which will brighten as time goes on. No betrayal 
 of the legacy which we have inherited can rob you of the immortality 
 of you.r achievement. On the other hand, whether Gettysburg be- 
 comes immortal, as related to one of the greatest transitions in the 
 history of the race, will depend upon Avhether the American Republic 
 is destined to only serve as a medium from which man passed from 
 monairhy to republic and from which mankind will project itself 
 into a deeper and broader fruition of democracy; or whether this 
 Republic, in itself, shall solve the problems born of the transition 
 from the old to the new, and this depends upon us and those who 
 are to follow. God grant that the American people, in preserving 
 this learacy, may make Gettysburg as innnortal in its relation to the 
 story of humanity as those who battled here made it immortal in 
 the annals of heroic achievement. 
 
 For one I believe that the mission of our Republic is something 
 more than to merely give to mankind as its contribution a world- 
 wide extension of free government; that its real mission is deeper 
 
MEMORIAL DAY ADDRESS. 11 
 
 and broader than that, being the development of that real demociacy 
 that means industrial as well as political justice, and that our peo- 
 ple will find the inspiration to this in recalling the achievements of 
 yourselves and your departed comrades, for nowhere in history is 
 there such inspiration. In all ages man has gone forth to battle, 
 obedient to one of three conditions. He was inspired by the lust 
 of conquest, or he went obedient to the conscript law, or the instinct 
 of self-defense steeled his heart and strengthened his arm while he 
 waged the warfare of defense. But in sixty-one there was no thought 
 of conquest, you scarcely knew what the conscript law meant, and 
 no instinct of self-defense born of imperiled fireside prompted you. 
 But lifted to a plane where manhood had never stood before, you 
 went forth to battle and to die that the spirit of free institutions 
 might be preserved. As with the manhood of sixty-one, so with the 
 womanhood of sixty-one. In all ages woman has cheered man when 
 he has gone forth to battle; sometimes she has shared in the lust of 
 conquest; again she has yielded, with man, obedience to the con- 
 scription ; and, again, she has shared with him in the instinct of de- 
 fense, but the womanhood of sixty-one was lifted to a plane where 
 womanhood had never stood before. There was no thought of con- 
 quest, scarcely a knowledge of conscript law, and no imperiled fireside, 
 but the womanhood of sixty-one stood where she bade manhood go forth 
 to battle and die for the spirit of free institutions. We must not forget 
 that it is not man alone who sacrifices in war, for it detracts nothing 
 from the meed of praise due you to say that you had the inspiration 
 born of the comradeship of brave men, but the womanhood of sixty- 
 one knew nothing of that. No waving banners, no martial music 
 no comradeship of brave men in camp and on battle line, but alone 
 she kept her vigils and bore her burden as only woman can. Surely, 
 inspired by the memory of the heroism and patriotism of that day; 
 inspired by the mute eloquence of the graves of our heroic dead, the 
 American people can not be recreant to that trust which your sacri- 
 fice committed to their care. 
 
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