And State Papers 485 



tory both bloody and contemptible. It was because 

 you, the men who wear the button of the Grand 

 Army, triumphed in those dark years, that every 

 American now holds his head high, proud in the 

 knowledge that he belongs to a Nation whose glo- 

 rious past and great present will be succeeded by 

 an even mightier future; whereas had you failed 

 we would all of us, North and South, East and 

 West, be now treated by other nations at the best 

 with contemptuous tolerance; at the worst with 

 overbearing insolence. 



Moreover, every friend of liberty, every believer 

 in self-government, every idealist who wished to 

 see his ideals take practical shape, wherever he 

 might be in the world, knew that the success of 

 all in which he most believed was bound up with 

 the success of the Union armies in this great strug- 

 gle. I confidently predict that when the final judg- 

 ment of history is recorded it will be said that in 

 no other war of which we have written record was 

 it more vitally essential for the welfare of mankind 

 that victory should rest where it finally rested. 

 There have been other wars for individual free- 

 dom. There have been other wars for national 

 greatness. But there has never been another war 

 in which the issues at stake were so large, looked 

 at from either standpoint. We take just pride in 

 the great deeds of the men of 1776, but we must 

 keep in mind that the Revolutionary War would 

 have been shorn of well-nigh all its results had 

 the side of union and liberty been defeated in the 



