I02 HENDERSON 



fluence which should extend far into the history of the future, 

 not only establishing in North America a great predominating 

 nation, with a popular and powerful government, but also secur- 

 ing the ascendency of the Anglo-Saxon branch of the Aryan 

 family, and the ultimate spread of Anglo-Saxon civilization 

 over the globe. Perhaps it is only a dreamer's vision wherein 

 I see the English language become the language of the world, 

 of the science, the institutions, and the arts of the world, and 

 the nations integrated as a congeries of republican states.'" 



A man that fights with another just because he feels like it, 

 without an analysis of that feeling, is not a worth}' example to 

 follow. That rugged boy from Illinois saw, through the dark 

 clouds overspreading the Republic, the smiling face of God 

 bringing liberty to man, and then he offered his life to help to 

 make that certain. 



I have written out the military history of Major Powell, but 

 the dry details are not what you want tonight. I very seldom 

 write speeches, for I can not get close enough to my audience if 

 I write out a speech, and tonight I want to get close to you, to 

 be a part of you, to live and think and feel with you, for the 

 life of Major Powell is a poem. 



Powell enlisted as a private soldier. He did not wait until 

 he could get a strap or bar, a silver leaf, a gold leaf, an eagle, 

 or a star, but after he had studied the conditions and knew 

 what the war meant he went right in. From August 7 to 10, 

 1861, he was with an expedition to Price's Landing, Commerce, 

 Benton, and Hamburg, Missouri ; from August 28 to September 

 5, 1861, he took part in the operations in southeast Missouri; 

 from September 13 to 20, 1861, he was at the siege of Lexing- 

 ton, Missouri; October 2, 1861, with an expedition from Bird's 

 Point to Charleston, Missouri; April 6, 1862, at the battle of 

 Shiloh, Tennessee, a bloody field. I remember riding over it 

 for hours to find comrades. I had a brother shot through the 

 heart there, and did not know it until two days afterwards, when 

 they brought his body in an ambulance and laid it at the door 

 of my tent. Riding for hours on that field, there was not a 

 moment when I could not see human forms stretched upon the 

 ground, many of them still struggling for life. It makes a man 



