Part 25 (2/2)

Our people also welcome with much pride and warmth his eminent official family, and the brilliant commander of our invincible army, and all these distinguished men before me, who are guests of the Society of the Army of the Potomac and of our city.

And now, our friends of the Society of the Army of the Potomac, I find it difficult to command adequate words with which to express to you the supreme gratification and enthusiasm of our people at your prompt acceptance of their invitation to hold your annual reunion in this old town and at your presence here to-day in such numbers.

We not only welcome you with open arms and glowing hearts, but we feel that this action on your part rises to the dignity of an impressive epoch in our national life; and we are not surprised that our ill.u.s.trious President, and all these distinguished men, should desire to grace this inspiring occasion with their presence.

It is the first time that your society has held one of its annual reunions on southern soil, and, in making this new departure, it was preeminently fit that you should honor Fredericksburg with your choice.

A French philosopher has written, ”Happy the people whose annals are tiresome,” but the far n.o.bler and more inspiring thought of the Anglo-Saxon race is that ”character const.i.tutes the true strength of nations and historic glory their best inheritance.”

As American citizens you are proud of the grand traditions and heroic memories that crowd your country's history; and nowhere else on this continent could your feet tread on ground more hallowed by historic memories than here.

I think before you leave us you will acknowledge that if the immortal names and deeds that this locality suggests should be stricken from the annals of time, most of the present school books of our country would be valueless and our national history itself would be as the play of Hamlet, with Hamlet left out.

The school boys and girls of our whole country are familiar with the story of Capt. John Smith and Pocahontas, and history records that right here Captain John Smith battled with and repulsed the Indians. So we may fairly claim, without the exercise of poetic license, that the struggle of the Anglo-Saxon race, to establish its civilization and supremacy on this continent, commenced on this spot in 1608, just one year after Jamestown was settled.

If we should draw a circle around this ancient city, with a radius of less than fifty miles, we should find within that narrow compa.s.s the birthplace of George Was.h.i.+ngton, of Thomas Jefferson, of James Madison, of James Monroe, of Zachary Taylor, of Chief-Justice John Marshall, of the Lees of the Revolution, of Patrick Henry, of Henry Clay, of Matthew Maury and of Robert E. Lee. If we should extend the circle but a very, very little, it would also embrace the birthplace of William Henry Harrison, of John Tyler, of Winfield Scott, and likewise the birthplace of this Republic at Yorktown.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A Tombstone in St. George's Churchyard, remarkable for its date. (See page 246)]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Confederate Monument in Confederate Cemetery. (See page 189)]

Is there any other similar segment of s.p.a.ce on the habitable globe so resplendent with stars of the first magnitude!

Seven Presidents of the United States and three of the greatest military leaders of modern times were born within two hours' ride of this city, estimated according to the most improved modern methods of travel!

That meteoric Mars of naval warfare, John Paul Jones, lived and kept store in this town, and went from here to take command of a s.h.i.+p of our colonial navy. He was the first man who ever raised our flag upon a national s.h.i.+p, and he struck terror to the heart of the British navy by his marvellous naval exploits during the Revolution.

It was right here that Was.h.i.+ngton's boyhood and youth were spent, and that he was trained and disciplined for his transcendent career, and it was to the unpretending home of his mother, still standing here--which you will visit--that Was.h.i.+ngton and Lafayette came when the war closed, to lay their laurels at her feet; and her ashes repose here, under a beautiful monument, erected by the Daughters of the American Revolution.

But there are other memories of heroic type, suggested by this locality, which come nearer home to our hearts, whose mournful splendor time cannot pale!

Here, and within fifteen miles of this city, in Spotsylvania county, more great armies manoeuvred, more great battles were fought, more men were engaged in mortal combat and more officers and privates were killed and wounded than in any similar territory in the world. More men fell in the battles of this one small county during the Civil war than Great Britain has lost in all her wars of a century; and more men were killed and wounded in four hours at the battle of Fredericksburg than Great Britain had lost in killed, wounded and prisoners in her eight months' war in South Africa.

When the fog lifted its curtain from the bleak plains about Fredericksburg on the morning of December 13, 1862, the sun flashed down on a spectacle of terrible moral sublimity!

One hundred thousand Union veterans, with two hundred and twenty cannon, were in ”battle's magnificently stern array,” and in motion, with nothing to obscure their serried ranks from the view of their expectant adversaries, safely entrenched on the sloping hills adjacent. The different sub-divisions of this great army were commanded that day by consummate masters of the art of war, whose names and brilliant exploits now illumine the pages of our national history, but its commander-in-chief was deficient in both strategic and tactical ability, and his most conspicuous merit seemed to be his perfect faith in the courage and invincibility of his army.

General Burnside did not overrate the magnificent courage and sublime self-sacrifice of his army, whose contempt of death that day on the open plains about Fredericksburg seemed to strike the electric chain wherewith we all are bound, and a thrill of admiration swept down the line of Lee's army for four miles whilst yet the battle raged; but General Burnside did underrate the strength of the positions which, without inspection or information, he rashly a.s.sailed, and he did underrate the valor of the men who held those positions. The appalling magnitude of his mistake was soon apparent, alike to his officers and his men, and yet column after column of that devoted army advanced, without a halting step, to the carnival of death, over a plain swept by the ceaseless and terrible fire of protected infantry and artillery--a plain of which General E. P. Alexander, in command of the Confederate artillery, posted on the heights, remarked the evening before, that ”not a chicken could live there when his guns were opened.”

No honors awaited the daring of these heroes that day; no despatch could give their names to the plaudits of their admiring countrymen, their advance was uncheered by the hope of emolument or fame; their death would be unnoticed, and yet they marched to their doom with unblanched cheeks and unfaltering tread.

Pause a moment and picture those serried ranks as they marched undismayed with grim precision and intrepid step to certain death, and, very many, to unknown graves, and tell me whether heroism did not have its holocaust, and patriotism and courage their grand coronation on these plains about Fredericksburg; and tell me whether a nation's grat.i.tude and meed of honor to these unknelled, uncoffined and unknown heroes, who thus gave up their lives for their country, in obedience to orders, should be measured by the accident of victory or defeat, or by the unclouded grandeur of the sacrifice they cheerfully made. Tell me whether the majestic memorial, which that splendid old veteran, General b.u.t.terfield, proposes to erect on the plains of Fredericksburg, to perpetuate the fame of the Fifth corps, will not commemorate a higher type of heroism than any similar memorial to that corps on the heights about Gettysburg! Tell me whether there was not more courage and more manhood required to a.s.sail Marye's Heights than to hold Cemetery Hill!

The charge of Pickett's Division at Gettysburg was far grander, even with its dreadful recoil, than was the defence of the stone wall at Fredericksburg; and the heroes of the former deserve more of their country than do the latter.

Napoleon, after the battle of Austerlitz, addressing his army, said: ”Soldiers, it will be enough for one of you to say, 'I was at the battle of Austerlitz,' for your countrymen to say, 'There is a brave man.'”

Impartial history will record that the Union soldiers who fought at Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, the Wilderness and at Spotsylvania Courthouse were not only brave men, but that their valor on those immortal fields decorated the Stars and Stripes with imperishable glory. And no American army of the future, composed of those who wore the blue and the gray, or their descendants, will ever permit that glory to be tarnished!

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