And State Papers 483 



We meet to-day upon one of the great battle-fields 

 of the Civil War. No other battle of the Civil 

 War lasting but one day shows as great a per- 

 centage of loss as that which occurred here upon 

 the day on which Antietam was fought. Moreover, 

 in its ultimate effects this battle was of momentous 

 and even decisive importance, for when it had ended 

 and Lee had retreated south of the Potomac, Lin- 

 coln forthwith published that immortal paper, the 

 preliminary declaration of emancipation; the paper 

 which decided that the Civil War, besides being 

 a war for the preservation of the Union, should be 

 a war for the emancipation of the slave, so that 

 from that time onward the cause of Union and of 

 Freedom, of national greatness and individual lib- 

 erty, were one and the same. 



Men of New Jersey, I congratulate your State be- 

 cause she has the right to claim her full share in 

 the honor and glory of that memorable day; and 

 I congratulate you, Governor Murphy, because on 

 that day you had the high good fortune to serve 

 as a lad with credit and honor in one of the five 

 regiments which your State sent to the battle. Four 

 of those regiments, by the way, served in the divi- 

 sion commanded by that gallant soldier, Henry W. 

 Slocum, whom we of New York can claim as our 

 own. The other regiment, that in which Governor 

 Murphy served, although practically an entirely 

 new regiment, did work as good as that of any vet- 

 eran organization upon the field, and suffered a pro- 

 portional loss. This regiment was at one time or- 



