ADDRESSES 159 



by taking his life in his hands and heroically exposing it 

 may often disappoint you by sordidness when you expect 

 continuous and consistent sacrifice. There was none of 

 the romance of historical heroism about our boys : in camp 

 there was something of the meanness, something of the 

 hypocrisy, something of the cowardice and blatant boast- 

 ing found among mankind out of camps; but this was ex- 

 ceptional where suffering and privation and peril were 

 daily probing every man to the very marrowbones of his 

 manhood. There is sturdy, admirable manliness in dying 

 bravely for error, but there is more than manliness, there 

 is magnificent moral sense, in dying for truth. Courage 

 alone is not a patent of nobility, for Macbeth, steeped to 

 his lips in crime, teemed with valor, with desperate, Satanic, 

 self -preservative, not self -abnegating instinct. Martyrdom 

 is of itself no proof of morality; many a so-called martyr's 

 ashes are not worth collecting; the smoke of his sacrifice 

 only vexed the sweet air of heaven, and his blood was the 

 seed of no church that was worth humanity's sustaining. 



The poor drunken wretches in tattered clothes, reeling 

 through our streets to-day, but wearing the button of the 

 Grand Army of the Republic, are not pleasant objects to 

 contemplate and are too often dismissed with sneer and 

 scorn. But never forget the debt of gratitude you owe them. 

 Life was just as dear to them as to you, but they risked it. 

 Death was just as much an object of fear to them as to you, 

 but they dared it. And for what? For a mere bit of senti- 

 ment? For a bit of bunting bearing a square of blue, sown 

 with stars, and barred with stripes of red and white? No! 

 not that. But for an idea, a principle, eternal as the ever- 

 lasting hills, — for right, for justice, for humanity. Forgive 



