AT NORTHWEST IOWA VETERAN REUNION L 



Time and space work the miracle of bringing people 

 nearer together. An American from California meeting 

 another American from New York in Constantinople 

 promptly recognizes him by his appearance and his 

 clothes; and although their homes are three thousand 

 miles apart they seem like next-door neighbors when 

 they meet upon the shores of the Bosphorus. 



When the soldiers of the late war first came home, they 

 felt no great anxiety to meet their comrades, except of 

 their own company or regiment. Later on a member of 

 their own brigade or division seemed like an old acquaint- 

 ance; and as time progressed the range of comradeship 

 enlarged until now the soldier of the Army of the Ten- 

 nessee looks upon a comrade of the Army of the Potomac 

 as though he had been a messmate. Thirty years have 

 gone by; the individuality with which we have associated 

 the contest disappears in the remote distance; and here 

 on the prairies of northwestern Iowa each soldier is a 

 comrade to every other man who wore the blue. State 

 and corps lines are lost, and each man knows the other 

 only as a defender of the Union. 



The prairies of northwestern Iowa did not send many 

 soldiers to the front ; this region was then but thinly in- 

 habited. When the war closed the soldiers turned their 

 faces to the west, and today there is no place so remote, 

 so far from the frontier but there you may meet some 

 surviving member of the Grand Army of the Republic. 



History is said to be a resurrection of the dead; the 



1 Address by John F. Lacey delivered at Le Mars, Iowa, June 20, 1895. 



