58 Presidential Addresses 



men on this Western Hemisphere. Nearly three 

 centuries have passed since the waters of our coasts 

 were first furrowed by the keels of those whose 

 children's children were to inherit this fair land. 

 Over a century and a half of colonial growth fol 

 lowed the settlement; and now for over a century 

 and a quarter we have been a nation. 



During our four generations of national life we 

 have had to do many tasks, and some of them of 

 far-reaching importance; but the only really vital 

 task was the one you did, the task of saving the 

 Union. There were other crises in which to have 

 gone wrong would have meant disaster; but this 

 was the one crisis in which to have gone wrong 

 would have meant not merely disaster but annihila 

 tion. For failure at any other point atonement 

 could have been made; but had you failed in the 

 iron days the loss would have been irreparable, the 

 defeat irretrievable. Upon your success depended 

 all the future of the people on this continent, and 

 much of the future of mankind as a whole. 



You left us a reunited country. You left us the 

 right of brotherhood with the men in gray, who 

 with such courage, and such devotion for what they 

 deemed the right, fought against you. But you 

 left us much more even than your achievement, 

 for you left us the memory of how it was achieved. 

 You, who made good by your valor and patriotism 

 the statesmanship of Lincoln and the soldiership of 

 Grant, have set as the standards for our efforts in 

 the future both the way you did your work in war 



