4^ Presidential Addresses 



against whom you fought and now the reunion is 

 so complete that it is useless to allude to the fact 

 that it is complete. And you left us another lesson 

 in brotherhood. To-day you come here, comrades 

 of the Army of the Cumberland the man who had 

 a commission and the man who fought in the ranks 

 brothers, because each did what there was in him 

 to do for the right. Each did what he could and all 

 alike shared equally in the glory of the deed that 

 was done. Officer and enlisted man stand at the 

 bar of history to be judged not by the difference of 

 rank, but by whether they did their duties in their 

 respective ranks. And 'oh, of how little count, 

 looking back, the difference of rank compared with 

 the doing of the duty ! What was true then is true 

 now. Doing the duty well is what counts. In 

 any audience of this kind one sees in the highest 

 official and social position men who fought as en 

 listed men in the armies of the Union or in the armies 

 of the Confederacy. All we ask is, did they do 

 their duty? If they did, honor to them! Little 

 we care what particular position they held, save 

 insofar as the holding of exalted position gave the 

 men a chance to do great and peculiar service. 



I shall not try to eulogize the dead General in the 

 presence of his comrades, in the presence of his 

 countrymen who have come to honor the memory 

 of the man against whom they were pitted in the 

 past who come here because they now, like us, are 

 Americans and nothing else, devoted to the Union 

 and to one flag. , I shall not try to speak of his ser- 



