And State Papers 491 



Their blood and their toil, their endurance and pa- 

 triotism, have made us and all who come after us 

 forever their debtors. They left us not merely a 

 reunited country, but a country incalculably greater 

 because of its rich heritage in the deeds which thus 

 left it reunited. As a Nation we are the greater, not 

 only for the valor and devotion to duty displayed 

 by the men in blue, who won in the great struggle 

 for the Union, but also for the valor and the loy- 

 alty toward what they regarded as right of the men 

 in gray; for this war, thrice fortunate above all 

 other recent wars in its outcome, left to all of us 

 the right of brotherhood alike with valiant victor 

 and valiant vanquished. 



Moreover, our homage must not only find expres- 

 sion on our lips; it must also show itself forth in 

 our deeds. It is a great and glorious thing for a 

 nation to be stirred to present triumph by the splen- 

 did memories of triumphs in the past. But it is a 

 shameful thing for a nation, if these memories stir 

 it only to empty boastings, to a pride that does not 

 shrink from present abasement, to that self-satis- 

 faction which accepts the high resolve and unbend- 

 ing effort of the father as an excuse for effortless 

 ease or wrongly directed effort in the son. We 

 of the present, if we are true to the past, must 

 show by our lives that we have learned aright the 

 lessons taught by the men who did the mighty 

 deeds of the past. We must have in us the spirit 

 which made the men of the Civil War what they 

 were; the spirit which produced leaders such as 



