GRANT 



SPEECH DELIVERED AT GALENA, ILLINOIS, APRIL 37, 1900 



IN in the long run every great nation instinctively 

 recognizes the men who peculiarly and pre-emi 

 nently represent its own type of greatness. Here 

 in our country we have had many public men of 

 high rank soldiers, orators, constructive statesmen, 

 and popular leaders. We have even had great phil 

 osophers who were also leaders of popular thought. 

 Each one of these men has had his own group of de 

 voted followers, and some of them have at times 

 swayed the nation with a power such as the fore 

 most of all hardly wielded. Yet as the generations 

 slip away, as the dust of conflict settles, and as 

 through the clearing air we look back with keener 

 wisdom into the nation's past, mightiest among the 

 mighty dead loom the three great figures of Wash 

 ington, Lincoln, and Grant. There are great men 

 also in the second rank ; for in any gallery of merely 

 national heroes Franklin and Hamilton, Jefferson 

 and Jackson, would surely have their place. But 

 these three greatest men have taken their place 

 among the great men of all nations, the great men 



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