And State Papers 365 



Governor, and I need not say how fond I am of 

 them, for that you know yourself. How could I 

 help being fond of people with whom I have worked, 

 with whom I marched to battle ? The only men here 

 to whom I would doff my hat quicker than to the men 

 of my own regiment are the men of the great war. 

 You know well the claim that comradeship in war 

 makes between man and man; and it has always 

 seemed to me, Mr. Governor, that in a sense my 

 regiment in its composition was a typical American 

 regiment. Its people came from the West chiefly, 

 but some from the East, from the South chiefly, but 

 some from the North, so that every section was rep 

 resented in it. They varied in birthplace as in creed ; 

 some were born on this side of the water, some on the 

 other side ; some of their ancestors had come to New 

 Mexico, as did your ancestors, Mr. Governor, when 

 this was already a city and at a time when not one 

 English-speaking community existed on the Atlantic 

 seaboard; some were men whose forefathers were 

 among the early Puritans and Pilgrims; some were 

 of those whose forefathers had settled by the banks 

 of the James even before the Puritan and Pilgrim 

 came to this country, but after your people came. 

 There were men in that regiment who themselves 

 were born, or whose parents were born, in England, 

 Ireland, Germany, or Scandinavia, but there was not 

 a man, no matter what his creed, what his birth 

 place, what his ancestry, who was not an American 

 and nothing else. We had representatives of the 

 real, original, native Americans, because we had no 



