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MEMORIAL DAY ADDRESS

From "After-Dinner and Other Speeches," with the permission of the
author.

BY JOHN D. LONG

In memory of the dead, in honor of the living, for inspiration to our
children, we gather to-day to deck the graves of our patriots with
flowers, to pledge commonwealth and town and citizen to fresh
recognition of the surviving soldier, and to picture yet again the
romance, the reality, the glory, the sacrifice of his service. As if it
were but yesterday, you recall him. He had but turned twenty. The
exquisite tint of youthful health was in his cheek. His pure heart
shone from frank, outspeaking eyes. His fair hair clustered from
beneath his cap. He had pulled a stout oar in the college race, or
walked the most graceful athlete on the village green. He had just
entered on the vocation of his life. The doorway of his home at this
season of the year was brilliant in the dewy morn with the clambering
vine and fragrant flower, as in and out he went, the beloved of mother
and sisters, and the ideal of a New England youth:--

"In face and shoulders like a god he was;
For o'er him had the goddess breathed the charm
Of youthful locks, the ruddy glow of youth,
A generous gladness in his eyes: such grace
As carver's hand to ivory gives, or when
Silver or Parian stone in yellow gold
Is set."

And when the drum beat, when the first martyr's blood sprinkled the
stones of Baltimore, he took his place in the ranks and went forward.
You remember his ingenuous and glowing letters to his mother, written
as if his pen were dipped in his very heart. How novel seemed to him
the routine of service, the life of camp and march! How eager the wish
to meet the enemy and strike his first blow for the good cause! What
pride at the promotion that came and put its chevron on his arm or its
strap upon his shoulder!

They took him prisoner. He wasted in Libby and grew gaunt and haggard
with the horror of his sufferings and with pity for the greater horror
of the sufferings of his comrades who fainted and died at his side. He
tunneled the earth and escaped. Hungry and weak, in terror of
recapture, he followed by night the pathway of the railroad. He slept
in thickets and sank in swamps. He saw the glitter of horsemen who
pursued him. He knew the bloodhound was on his track. He reached the
line; and, with his hand grasping at freedom, they caught and took him
back to his captivity. He was exchanged at last; and you remember, when
he came home on a short furlough, how manly and war-worn he had grown.
But he soon returned to the ranks and to the welcome of his comrades.
They recall him now alike with tears and pride. In the rifle pits
around Petersburg you heard his steady voice and firm command. Some one
who saw him then fancied that he seemed that day like one who forefelt
the end. But there was no flinching as he charged. He had just turned
to give a cheer when the fatal ball struck him. There was a convulsion
of the upward hand. His eyes, pleading and loyal, turned their last
glance to the flag. His lips parted. He fell dead, and at nightfall lay
with his face to the stars. Home they brought him, fairer than Adonis
over whom the goddess of beauty wept. They buried him in the village
churchyard under the green turf. Year by year his comrades and his kin,
nearer than comrades, scatter his grave with flowers. Do you ask who he
was? He was in every regiment and every company. He went out from every
Massachusetts village. He sleeps in every Massachusetts burying ground.
Recall romance, recite the names of heroes of legend and song, but
there is none that is his peer.


WILLIAM MCKINLEY

From an address in the United States Senate

BY JOHN HAY

For the third time the Congress of the United States are assembled to
commemorate the life and the death of a President slain by the hand of
an assassin. The attention of the future historian will be attracted to
the features which reappear with startling sameness in all three of
these awful crimes: the uselessness, the utter lack of consequence of
the act; the obscurity, the insignificance of the criminal; the
blamelessness--so far as in our sphere of existence the best of men may
be held blameless--of the victim. Not one of our murdered Presidents
had an enemy in the world; they were all of such preeminent purity of
life that no pretext could be given for the attack of passional crime;
they were all men of democratic instincts, who could never have
offended the most jealous advocates of equality; they were of kindly
and generous nature, to whom wrong or injustice was impossible; of
moderate fortune, whose slender means nobody could envy. They were men
of austere virtue, of tender heart, of eminent abilities, which they
had devoted with single minds to the good of the Republic. If ever men
walked before God and man without blame, it was these three rulers of
our people. The only temptation to attack their lives offered was their
gentle radiance--to eyes hating the light that was offense enough.

The obvious elements which enter into the fame of a public man are few
and by no means recondite. The man who fills a great station in a
period of change, who leads his country successfully through a time of
crisis; who, by his power of persuading and controlling others, has
been able to command the best thought of his age, so as to leave his
country in a moral or material condition in advance of where he found
it,--such a man's position in history is secure. If, in addition to
this, his written or spoken words possess the subtle qualities which
carry them far and lodge them in men's hearts; and, more than all, if
his utterances and actions, while informed with a lofty morality, are
yet tinged with the glow of human sympathy,--the fame of such a man
will shine like a beacon through the mists of ages--an object of
reverence, of imitation, and of love. It should be to us an occasion of
solemn pride that in the three great crises of our history such a man
was not denied us. The moral value to a nation of a renown such as
Washington's and Lincoln's and McKinley's is beyond all computation. No
loftier ideal can be held up to the emulation of ingenuous youth. With
such examples we cannot be wholly ignoble. Grateful as we may be for
what they did, let us be still more grateful for what they were. While
our daily being, our public policies, still feel the influence of their
work, let us pray that in our spirits their lives may be voluble,
calling us upward and onward.

There is not one of us but feels prouder of his native land because the
august figure of Washington presided over its beginnings; no one but
vows it a tenderer love because Lincoln poured out his blood for it; no
one but must feel his devotion for his country renewed and kindled when
he remembers how McKinley loved, revered, and served it, showed in his
life how a citizen should live, and in his last hour taught us how a
gentleman could die.


ROBERT E. LEE

From an address at the unveiling of a statue of General Lee, at
Washington and Lee University, 1883

BY JOHN W. DANIEL

Mounted in the field and at the head of his troops, a glimpse of Lee
was an inspiration. His figure was as distinctive as that of Napoleon.
The black slouch hat, the cavalry boots, the dark cape, the plain gray
coat without an ornament but the three stars on the collar, the calm,
victorious face, the splendid, manly figure on the gray war horse,--he
looked every inch the true knight--the grand, invincible champion of a
great principle.

The men who wrested victory from his little band stood wonder-stricken
and abashed when they saw how few were those who dared oppose them, and
generous admiration burst into spontaneous tribute to the splendid
leader who bore defeat with the quiet resignation of a hero. The men
who fought under him never revered or loved him more than on the day he
sheathed his sword. Had he but said the word, they would have died for
honor. It was because he said the word that they resolved to live for
duty.

Plato congratulated himself, first, that he was born a man; second,
that he had the happiness of being a Greek; and third, that he was a
contemporary of Sophocles. And in this audience to-day, and here and
there the wide world over, is many an one who wore the gray, who
rejoices that he was born a man to do a man's part for his suffering
country; that he had the glory of being a Confederate; and who feels a
justly proud and glowing consciousness in his bosom when he says unto
himself: "I was a follower of Robert E. Lee. I was a soldier in the
army of Northern Virginia."

As president of Washington and Lee University, General Lee exhibited
qualities not less worthy and heroic than those displayed on the broad
and open theater of conflict when the eyes of nations watched his every
action. In the quiet walks of academic life, far removed from "war or
battle's sound," came into view the towering grandeur, the massive
splendor, and the loving-kindness of his character. There he revealed
in manifold gracious hospitalities, tender charities, and patient,
worthy counsels, how deep and pure and inexhaustible were the fountains
of his virtues. And loving hearts delight to recall, as loving lips
will ever delight to tell, the thousand little things he did which sent
forth lines of light to irradiate the gloom of the conquered land and
to lift up the hopes and cheer the works of his people.

Come we then to-day in loyal love to sanctify our memories, to purify
our hopes, to make strong all good intent by communion with the spirit
of him who, being dead, yet speaketh. Let us crown his tomb with the
oak, the emblem of his strength, and with the laurel, the emblem of his
glory. And as we seem to gaze once more on him we loved and hailed as
Chief, the tranquil face is clothed with heaven's light, and the mute
lips seem eloquent with the message that in life he spoke, "There is a
true glory and a true honor; the glory of duty done, the honor of the
integrity of principle."


FAREWELL ADDRESS TO THE UNITED STATES SENATE

BY HENRY CLAY

From 1806, the period of my entrance upon this noble theater, with
short intervals, to the present time, I have been engaged in the public
councils, at home or abroad. Of the services rendered during that long
and arduous period of my life it does not become me to speak; history,
if she deign to notice me, and posterity, if the recollection of my
humble actions shall be transmitted to posterity, are the best, the
truest, and the most impartial judges.

I have not escaped the fate of other public men, nor failed to incur
censure and detraction of the bitterest, most unrelenting, and most
malignant character. But I have not meanwhile been unsustained.
Everywhere throughout the extent of this great continent I have had
cordial, warmhearted, faithful, and devoted friends, who have known me,
loved me, and appreciated my motives.

In the course of a long and arduous public service, especially during
the last eleven years in which I have held a seat in the Senate, from
the same ardor and enthusiasm of character, I have no doubt, in the
heat of debate, and in an honest endeavor to maintain my opinions
against adverse opinions alike honestly entertained, as to the best
course to be adopted for the public welfare, I may have often
inadvertently and unintentionally, in moments of excited debate, made
use of language that has been offensive, and susceptible of injurious
interpretation towards my brother Senators. If there be any here who
retain wounded feelings of injury or dissatisfaction produced on such
occasions, I beg to assure them that I now offer the most ample apology
for any departure on my part from the established rules of
parliamentary decorum and courtesy. On the other hand, I assure
Senators, one and all, without exception and without reserve, that I
retire from this chamber without carrying with me a single feeling of
resentment or dissatisfaction toward the Senate or any one of its
members.

In retiring, as I am about to do, forever, from the Senate, suffer me
to express my heartfelt wishes that all the great and patriotic objects
of the wise framers of our Constitution may be fulfilled; that the high
destiny designed for it may be fully answered; and that its
deliberations, now and hereafter, may eventuate in securing the
prosperity of our beloved country, in maintaining its rights and honor
abroad, and upholding its interests at home. I retire, I know, at a
period of infinite distress and embarrassment. I wish I could take my
leave of you under more favorable auspices; but, without meaning at
this time to say whether on any or on whom reproaches for the sad
condition of the country should fall, I appeal to the Senate and to the
world to bear testimony to my earnest and continued exertions to avert
it, and to the truth that no blame can justly attach to me.

May the most precious blessings of heaven rest upon the whole Senate
and each member of it, and may the labors of every one redound to the
benefit of the nation and the advancement of his own fame and renown.
And when you shall retire to the bosom of your constituents, may you
receive that most cheering and gratifying of all human rewards--their
cordial greeting of "Well done, good and faithful servant."

And now, Mr. President, and Senators, I bid you all a long, a lasting,
and a friendly farewell.


THE DEATH OF GARFIELD

From an address before both houses of Congress, February, 1882

BY JAMES G. BLAINE

Surely, if happiness can ever come from the honors or triumphs of this
world, on that quiet July morning James A. Garfield may well have been
a happy man. No foreboding of evil haunted him, no slightest
premonition of danger clouded his sky. His terrible fate was upon him
in an instant. One moment he stood erect, strong, confident in the
years stretching peacefully out before him. The next he lay wounded,
bleeding, helpless, doomed to weary weeks of torture, to silence and
the grave.

Great in life, he was surpassingly great in death. For no cause, in the
very frenzy of wantonness and wickedness, by the red hand of Murder he
was thrust from the full tide of this world's interest, from its hopes,
its aspirations, its victories, into the visible presence of death. And
he did not quail. Not alone for the one short moment in which, stunned
and dazed, he could give up life, hardly aware of its relinquishment,
but through days of deadly languor, through weeks of agony that was not
less agony because silently borne, with clear sight and calm courage he
looked into his open grave. What blight and ruin met his anguished eyes
whose lips may tell--what brilliant broken plans, what baffled high
ambitions, what sundering of strong, warm, manhood's friendships, what
bitter rending of sweet household ties! Behind him a proud, expectant
nation; a great host of sustaining friends; a cherished and happy
mother wearing the full, rich honors of her early toil and tears; the
wife of his youth, whose whole life lay in his; the little boys not yet
emerged from childhood's day of frolic; the fair young daughter; the
sturdy sons just springing into closest companionship, claiming every
day, and every day rewarding, a father's love and care; and in his
heart the eager, rejoicing power to meet all demand. Before him
desolation and great darkness! And his soul was not shaken. His
countrymen were thrilled with instant, profound, and universal
sympathy. Masterful in his mortal weakness, he became the center of a
nation's love, enshrined in the prayers of a world. But all the love
and all the sympathy could not share with him his suffering. He trod
the winepress alone. With unfaltering front he faced death. With
unfailing tenderness he took leave of life. Above the demoniac hiss of
the assassin's bullet he heard the voice of God. With simple
resignation he bowed to the divine decree.

As the end drew near, his early craving for the sea returned. The
stately mansion of power had been to him the wearisome hospital of
pain, and he begged to be taken from its prison walls, from its
oppressive, stifling air, from its homelessness and its hopelessness.
Gently, silently, the love of a great people bore the pale sufferer to
the longed-for healing of the sea, to live or to die, as God should
will, within sight of its heaving billows, within sound of its manifold
voices. With wan, fevered face tenderly lifted to the cooling breeze he
looked out wistfully upon the ocean's changing wonders--on its far
sails whitening in the morning light; on its restless waves rolling
shoreward to break and die beneath the noonday sun; on the red clouds
of evening arching low to the horizon; on the serene and shining
pathway of the stars. Let us think that his dying eyes read a mystic
meaning which only the rapt and parting soul may know. Let us believe
that in the silence of the receding world he heard the great waves
breaking on a farther shore, and felt already upon his wasted brow the
breath of the eternal morning.


THE SECOND INAUGURAL ADDRESS

Delivered from the steps of the Capitol at Washington, 1865.

BY ABRAHAM LINCOLN

FELLOW COUNTRYMEN,--At this second appearing to take the oath of the
Presidential office there is less occasion for an extended address than
there was at first. Then a statement, somewhat in detail, of a course
to be pursued seemed very fitting and proper. Now, at the expiration of
four years, during which public declarations have been constantly
called forth on every point and phase of the great contest which still
absorbs the attention and engrosses the energies of the nation, little
that is new could be presented.

The progress of our arms, upon which all else chiefly depends, is as
well known to the public as to myself, and it is, I trust, reasonably
satisfactory and encouraging to all. With high hope for the future, no
prediction in regard to it is ventured.

On the occasion corresponding to this four years ago, all thoughts were
anxiously directed to an impending civil war. All dreaded it, all
sought to avoid it. While the inaugural address was being delivered
from this place, devoted altogether to saving the Union without war,
insurgent agents were in the city seeking to destroy it with war--
seeking to dissolve the Union and divide the effects by negotiation.
Both parties deprecated war, but one of them would make war rather than
let the nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than let
it perish, and the war came. One eighth of the whole population were
colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized
in the Southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and
powerful interest. All knew that this interest was somehow the cause of
the war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the
object for which the insurgents would rend the Union by war, while the
Government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial
enlargement of it.

Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which
it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the
conflict might cease when, or even before, the conflict itself should
cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental
and astounding. Both read the same Bible, and pray to the same God, and
each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any
men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread
from the sweat of other men's faces; but let us judge not, that we be
not judged. The prayer of both could not be answered. That of neither
has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. Woe unto
the world because of offenses, for it must needs be that offenses come,
but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh. If we shall suppose
that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence
of God, must needs come, but which having continued through His
appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North
and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense
came, shall we discern there any departure from those divine attributes
which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we
hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may
speedily pass away. Yet if God wills that it continue until all the
wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of
unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with
the lash shall be repaid by another drawn with the sword, as was said
three thousand years ago, so still it must be said, that the judgments
of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the
right as God gives us to see the right, let us finish the work we are
in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have
borne the battle, and for his widow and his orphans, to do all which
may achieve and cherish a just and a lasting peace among ourselves and
with all nations.


THE DEATH OF PRINCE ALBERT

From an address in the House of Commons, February, 1862

BY BENJAMIN DISRAELI

No person can be insensible to the fact that the House meets to-night
under circumstances very much changed from those which have attended
our assembling for many years. Of late years--indeed, for more than
twenty years past--whatever may have been our personal rivalries, and
whatever our party strife, there was at least one sentiment in which we
all coincided, and that was a sentiment of admiring gratitude to that
Throne whose wisdom and whose goodness had so often softened the
acerbities of our free public life, and had at all times so
majestically represented the matured intelligence of an enlightened
people.

Sir, all that is changed. He is gone who was "the comfort and support"
of that Throne. It has been said that there is nothing which England so
much appreciates as the fulfillment of duty. The Prince whom we have
lost not only was eminent for the fulfillment of duty, but it was the
fulfillment of the highest duty under the most difficult circumstances.
Prince Albert was the Consort of his Sovereign--he was the father of
one who might be his Sovereign--he was the Prime Councillor of a realm,
the political constitution of which did not even recognize his
political existence.

Sir, it is sometimes deplored by those who admired and loved him that
he was thwarted occasionally in his undertakings, and that he was not
duly appreciated. But these are not circumstances for regret, but for
congratulation. They prove the leading and original mind which has so
long and so advantageously labored for this country. Had he not
encountered these obstacles, had he not been subject to this occasional
distrust and misconception, it would only have shown that he was a man
of ordinary mold and temper. Those who improve must change, those who
change must necessarily disturb and alarm men's prejudices. What he had
to encounter was only a demonstration that he was a man superior to his
age, and therefore admirably adapted for the work of progress. There is
one other point, and one only, on which I will presume for a moment to
dwell, and it is not for the sake of you, Sir, or those who now hear
me, or of the generation to which we belong, but it is that those who
come after us may not misunderstand the nature of this illustrious man.
Prince Albert was not a mere patron; he was not one of those who by
their gold or by their smiles reward excellence or stimulate exertion.
His contributions to the cause of State were far more powerful and far
more precious. He gave to it his thought, his time, his toil; he gave
to it his life. On both sides and in all parts of the House I see many
gentlemen who occasionally have acted with the Prince at those council
boards where they conferred and consulted upon the great undertakings
with which he was connected. I ask them, without fear of a denial,
whether he was not the leading spirit, whether his was not the mind
which foresaw the difficulty, his not the resources that supplied the
remedy; whether his was not the courage which sustained them under
apparently overpowering difficulties; whether every one who worked with
him did not feel that he was the real originator of those plans of
improvement which they assisted in carrying into effect?

But what avail these words? This House to-night has been asked to
condole with the Crown upon this great calamity. No easy office. To
condole, in general, is the office of those who, without the pale of
sorrow, still feel for the sorrowing. But in this instance the country
is as heart-stricken as its Queen. Yet in the mutual sensibility of a
Sovereign and a people there is something ennobling--something which
elevates the spirit beyond the level of mere earthly sorrow. The
counties, the cities, the corporations of the realm--those illustrious
associations of learning and science and art and skill, of which he was
the brightest ornament and the inspiring spirit, have bowed before the
Throne. It does not become the Parliament of the country to be silent.
The expression of our feelings may be late, but even in that lateness
may be observed some propriety. To-night the two Houses sanction the
expression of the public sorrow, and ratify, as it were, the record of
a nation's woe.

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