Historical voices

Our country has been populated by pioneers, and therefore it has in it more energy, more enterprise, more expansive power than any other in the wide world.

They were men of hope and expectation, of enterprise and energy; for the men of dull content or more dull despair had no part in the great movement into and across the New World.

We can never as a nation afford to forget that, back of our reason, our understanding, and our common-sense, there must lie, in full strength, the tremendous fundamental passions, which are not often needed, but which every truly great…

We need to have within us the splendid heroic virtues which alone avail in the mighty crises, the terrible catastrophes whereby a nation is either purified as if by fire, or else consumed forever in the flames.

Yet in dwelling upon the lessons for our ordinary conduct which we can learn from your experience, we must never forget that it also shows us what should be our model in times that are not ordinary, in the times that try men’s souls.

And there is no danger to the future of this country just so long as that lesson is remembered in all its bearings, civil and military.

Nevertheless, not a little good has been done even by such struggles as that which ended in ensuring independence to Cuba, and in giving to the Philippines a freedom to which they could never have attained had we permitted them to fall…

They had gone down to the root of things, and knew how to judge and value, each man his neighbor, whether that neighbor was rich or poor, neither envying him because of his wealth nor despising him because of his poverty.

In the breasts of the men who saw Appomattox there was no room for the growth of the jealous, greedy, sullen envy which makes anarchy, which has bred the red Commune.

From that day to this the men who fought in the great war have inevitably had in them a spirit to which appeal for any lofty cause could be made with the confident knowledge that there would be immediate and eager response.

Each came back with his own power for labor and endurance strengthened, and yet with his sympathy for others quickened.

From the major-general to the private in the ranks each came back to civil life with the proud consciousness of duty well done, and all with a feeling of community of interest which they could have gained in no other way.

But he carried within him memories of inestimable benefit to himself, and he bequeathed to us who come after him the priceless heritage of his example.

When the end came his sole reward was to feel that the Union had been saved, and the flag which had been rent in sunder once more made whole.

Moreover, all these qualities of fine heroism and stubborn endurance were displayed in a spirit of devotion to a lofty ideal, and not for material gain.

It was a good thing, a very good thing, to have a great mass of our people learn what it was to face death and endure toil together, and all on an exact level.

It is therefore of the utmost benefit to have men thrown together under circumstances which force them to realize their community of interest, especially where the community of interest arises from community of devotion to a lofty ideal.

We can retain an ever-growing sense of the all-importance, not merely to our people but to mankind, of the Union victory, while giving the freest and heartiest recognition to the sincerity and self-devotion of those Americans, our…

At the opening of this new century, all of us, the children of a reunited country, have a right to glory in the countless deeds of valor done alike by the men of the North and the men of the South.

The realization of the underlying brotherhood of our people, the feeling that there should be among them an essential unity of purpose and sympathy, must be kept close at heart if we are to do our work well here in our American life.

The Declaration of Independence would now sound like a windy platitude, the Constitution of the United States would ring as false as if drawn by the Abbé Sieyès in the days of the French Terror, if your stern valor had not proved the truth…

The glory of Washington and the majesty of Marshall would have crumbled into meaningless dust if you and your comrades had not buttressed their work with your strength of steel, your courage of fire.

It was given to you, when the mighty days came, to do the mighty deeds for which the days called, and if your deeds had been left undone, all that had been already accomplished would have turned into apples of Sodom under our teeth.

We can feel proud of what others did only because of what you did.