USA > Georgia > The army reunion : with reports of the meetings of the societies of the Army of the Cumberland; the Army of the Tennessee; the Army of the Ohio: and the Army of Georgia > Part 9
USA > Ohio > The army reunion : with reports of the meetings of the societies of the Army of the Cumberland; the Army of the Tennessee; the Army of the Ohio: and the Army of Georgia > Part 9
USA > Tennessee > The army reunion : with reports of the meetings of the societies of the Army of the Cumberland; the Army of the Tennessee; the Army of the Ohio: and the Army of Georgia > Part 9
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24
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Speech of General Terry.
The idea of duty to our country is not an unfamiliar one to those who are assembled within these walls. All here have proved their devotion to it in days of toil, of suffering, and of danger. But it is not alone amid great convulsions that that devotion should be manifested. The national life is made up of the individual lives of its people, and every man, however hum- ble his sphere of action may be, contributes his quota to the nation's good or ill. Men of science tell us that, in the material world, no force is ever lost. The beam of light, darting from its source, flies onward in the depths of space through all eternity. A word is spoken ; it is but a breath, a little movement of the air, and in a moment, to our dull senses, it is gone forever ; but it is still living ; the vibrant atmosphere still records it, feebly and more feebly as time passes, but on the ear of the Omniscient it is forever sounding. To that ear the quivering atoms still echo the words of innocence spoken in the garden before the fall ; still shudder at the sounds of " crucify him, crucify him," which were uttered in the city of David more than eighteen hundred years ago. So is it also in the world of action. Men can not, if they would, live for the present alone. Every action has its conse- quences, and every consequence its consequences. Every decd is a link in the great chain of cause. When the places that know us now shall know us no more forever; when even the stones which the hands of affection shall raise to mark our last resting-places shall have crumbled into dust; when our names shall have perished front the memory of man, our undying actions will still live, affecting for good or for evil the generations yet to be. Our hands are upon chords which stretch far down through the coming centuries, and as we shall touch them, so will they resound. They might have resounded with the clank of chains, and the despairing cries of an enslaved and a down- trodden people. Let us be glad in the belief that they will resound with the great anthem of the free. Let us then, by our
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love of country, by our sense of duty to our country, strengthened by the recollections which we have here renewed of common effort, when our country's peril was the greatest, and her need was the sorest, resolve to so live that our every act shall be a mite cast into the treasury of our country's welfare, to do that which in us may lie to rear here the altars of truth and of justice, and to fix firm and deep, on the everlasting rocks, the foundations of that great fabric of liberty which shall not only shelter us and our posterity, but shall be the refuge of the oppressed of every nation and of every clime.
SONG by the Glee Club ; - " Unfurl the Glorious Banner!"
SECOND TOAST ; - The President of the United States.
Speech of GENERAL R. P. BUCKLAND :
FELLOW SOLDIERS: General John M. Palmer, who was to have responded to this toast, being unavoidably absent, I am called upon, without due notice, to take his place. I wish to say, by way of apology, that I have not willingly taken upon myself the risk of undertaking to satisfy your expectations ; nor do I expect to do so. But having received a peremptory order from superior authority, without an opportunity of declining, I am before you to respond, as best I may, to a toast which was designed to call out, for the benefit of this great audience of heroes, the well-known eloquence of the distinguished Governor elect of this State.
The Constitution of the United States vests in the President the executive power of the nation, and makes him the Commander-in-chief of the Army and Navy of the United States. It is, therefore, peculiarly appropriate, on this occasion, that we who formed a part of that great army which so recently
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Speech of General Buckland.
saved the life of the nation by conquering its enemies on a hundred bloody fields, should pay proper respect to the officer to which belonged the responsibility of organizing that army, and developing the resources which enabled it to win the victory. We can not forget how nobly that great responsibility was discharged by the lamented Lincoln. Unlike kings and emperors, who elevate themselves to power by trampling upon the rights and liberties of the people, the President of the United States represents the executive power of a free people, and is entrusted with that power by their free choice, to enforce, not his, but their will; to execute the laws which they make through their representatives assembled in the Congress of the United States. It is a high and an honorable trust, to which it is the right of every American citizen to aspire; and it has been said that every American, at some period of his life, has entertained expectations of becoming President of the United States. However that may be, we are honored to-night by the presence of one distinguished gentleman who has not been disappointed in that regard, and we are also honored by the presence of several others whose great services in the field entitle them to the highest place in the affections of the American people. May they in due time receive their reward.
The American people, grateful to General Washington for his successful services as the leader of their armies in the war for American Independence, expressed their gratitude and appreciation of his patriotism by electing him the first President of the United States; and he, in return for their confidence, rewarded the people, and honored himself, by a faithful execu- tion of the trust. And now the American people of to-day, equally grateful to General Grant for his great services as the leader of their armies, suddenly brought into the field to defend and preserve the national Government, following the example
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of their fathers, have embraced the first opportunity to express their gratitude to him, and their faith in his patriotism and unerring judgment, by electing him to the exalted position first occupied by Washington. It is the ardent hope of every patriotic citizen that the administration of General Grant may be as successful as that of General Washington in healing up the national wounds, and laying the foundation of long years of peace and prosperity.
The most eminent men of the nation are selected to fill the Presidential office, but no man, however exalted for talent, or however distinguished his services as a general, or as a statesman, can add to the dignity of the office; for the reason that the office is the concentration of the sovereign executive power of all the people of the nation. A man may be elevated to that office who is wanting in ability to perform its high and arduous duties, or who may prove faithless to the trust, but such a misfortune would only disgrace the man. It would not in the least disparage the dignity of the office; nor should it lessen our respect for its legitimate authority. The prosperity of our free Republican institutions depends upon the disposition of the people to enact only just laws, and then to respect and obey them, whoever may be, for the time being, intrusted with their execution. It is, therefore, a duty, on all occasions like this, to pay proper respect to the President of the United States.
And now, my friends, in closing these remarks, I have only to express my sorrowful regrets that among so many of you who expect to be, and so many who deserve to be, so few ever will be President of the United States !
THIRD TOAST ; - The Army and Navy of the United States-While each is ever ready, by its own resources, to sustain the national honor, may they always stand shoulder to shoulder, as on the Mississippi, in promoting the prosperity and
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Speech of General Schofield.
preserving the union of our common country. - Sentiment proposed by Admiral D. G. Farragut, U. S. N.
Speech of GENERAL JOHN M. SCHOFIELD :
FELLOW SOLDIERS : I regret my inability to fitly respond to your toast, " The Army and the Navy." But I am more than compensated by the presence of so many of those gallant soldiers who, in war and peace, were and are always ready for the discharge of every duty. I rejoice to see here, also, a goodly number of the gallant officers of that volunteer navy which bore so honorable a part in many of the memorable operations in which you were engaged, and I regret that Farragut, Porter, and other naval heroes are not also with us to-night. I may well leave it for those gentlemen who are to respond severally for the armies represented here, to make in the aggregate a fitting response for the army at large, and the navy, for the gallant armies of which they will speak are fair types of the whole ; but while I leave it for others to recount, as well they may do with honest pride, the events of the past, I may be permitted to dwell for a moment upon the present, and indulge in hopes of the future.
We see in the fraternal union which we now . enjoy, an exhibition of the peculiar character of the army and navy of the United States, as distinguished from those of other great nations. Drawn together by a patriotic sense of duty in our country's hour of peril, and held together through long years of desperate war by that bond of duty which alone is capable of thus binding men to each other, we find engendered by our martial union, ties of affection and respect, which have only been increased during nearly four years of peace. Although scattered from the mountains to the sea, and from the lakes to the gulf, at the call of our honored chief we assemble around this festive board,
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to pledge each other anew that, whether in war or peace, for our country's honor and weal, we will stand shoulder to shoulder until the great battle of life is ended.
The Grand Army of the Union has not been disbanded- it still lives in the true, stout hearts of its soldiers, and even when they have passed off the stage of life, its spirit will exist in their sons-yea, and in their daughters. As with the individual man, so it is with the nation. When from the dictates of an honest heart the nation puts forth its full strength to accomplish a great good, the heart is thereby enlightened and purified, the strength increased, and the life prolonged. In this increase of strength and vitality, the nation feels that its grand army and navy, whose deeds are the nation's pride, are not things of the past, but that they still live.
Music by the Band ; - " Red, White, and Blue."
FOURTH TOAST ; - The Army of Georgia.
Speech of General II. W. SLOCUM :
. MR. CHAIRMAN AND FELLOW-SOLDIERS: On behalt of the officers and soldiers of the Army of Georgia, both present and absent, I thank you for the compliment paid to that organization. I regret the absence of Generals Davis, Williams and Mower, who, as corps commanders in that army, acquired the most envia- ble reputations as soldiers, and to whose gallantry and efficiency the organization was, in a great measure, indebted for the good name accorded to it at the close of the war. I am glad to see that several of its division and brigade commanders are present. On our campaigns these officers were frequently in a strife for the honor of taking the head of the column, and, when brought into action, they were always, of course, in advance of the com-
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Speech of General Slocum.
mander. Now, it is an old and established rule that "those foremost in the fight should be first at the feast." Under this rule, they are entitled, on this occasion, to speak for the Army of Georgia, and that honor I shall cheerfully accord to them.
This is the first meeting of the officers and soldiers of the Western Armies that I have had the pleasure of attending since our final review in Washington ; and this reunion has been to me one of the happiest events of my life. It is always a pleasure to a soldier to meet a comrade who has borne with him the dangers and hardships of a campaign-recalling to mind with him the scenes of the past- the two together again fighting their battles over. It is true that the remembrance of nearly every scene is tinged with sadness, for scarcely an event can be called to mind which is not associated with the loss of some gallant comrade, whose bravery and devotion to his country we can but feel should have been rewarded by his being permitted to enjoy with us the present hour-the pleasure of beholding a Union restored-a country saved. But in this conviction who can say that those of us who survive, reap in reality any more glorious harvest than those who themselves fell beneath the sickle of death? A nation's tears are the tribute paid to their memory- tears that perennially water the laurels they wore, and will keep them fresh and green long after we have passed off the stage.
To-day we have been permitted to meet-not a single com- rade, but thousands of them, from all parts of the country, most of whom we have not met since the disbanding of our armies. In addition to this, good tidings are brought us from absent com- rades, scattered over nearly every state-tidings proving that the war has not injured or demoralized the young men who carried it to a successful close. We are told that the great mass of the soldiers, having returned to civil life, are struggling with difficul- ties as successfully as they did while in the army. General Sherman closed his report on the campaign through the Caro
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linas with these words : "In conclusion, I beg to express, in the most emphatic manner, my entire satisfaction with the tone and temper of the whole army. Nothing seems to dampen their energy, zeal, or cheerfulness. It is impossible to conceive of a march involving more labor and exposure; yet, I can not recall an instance of bad temper by the way, or of hearing an expres- sion of doubt as to our perfect success in the end." In saying this, the General did but justice to the officers and men of his command, and I have never entertained a fear that men of whom these words could be truthfully spoken, would fail of success on returning to their homes and entering upon the peaceful avoca- tions of life.
To most of our soldiers the army was a good school. It taught not only lessons of patriotism, but of perseverance and energy. The man who has fought four years to save his country, has had his love of country burned into his soul by the ordeal of fire, and he who, in the dead hour of winter, has uncomplain- ingly forded wide rivers, and constructed roadways through almost impenetrable swamps, will not be apt, in civil life, to succumb to ordinary difficulties. Speaking of war, Burke says it suspends the rules of moral obligation, and what is long suspended is in danger of being totally abrogated. Civil wars, he declares, strike deepest into the manners of the people. They vitiate their politics; they corrupt their morals; they pervert even the natural taste and relish of equity and justice. By teaching us to consider our fellow-creatures in a hostile light, the whole body of our nation becomes gradually less dear to us. The very names of affection and kindred, which were the bond of charity while we agreed, become new incentives to hatred and rage. In her hour of trial, when enemies at home and abroad were predicting and desiring her utter destruction, our country found defenders in her own sons. The patriotism of our people was not displayed on the battle-field alone, but from nearly every
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Speech of General Slocum.
city and town came money as well as men, and the money came at a time when the lender evinced patriotism as well as faith in loaning to the Government. The final victory of our arms was a triumph for the advocates of a republican form of government throughout the world; and now, to complete our triumph, to gladden the hearts of our friends in every land, to make our victory doubly dear and brilliant, we should struggle to avert the evils which, we are told, always follow civil war. Let not the war vitiate our politics, corrupt our morals, or pervert our taste for equity and justice, and our victory will be more complete and more grand than any in the world's history.
As to the best method of averting these evils, the most patriotic men may at times differ. As on the great march to the sea, we sometimes found corps diverging from each other, and occasion- ally a body of troops, either from a defect in our maps, or from the ignorance of our guides, would be found on the wrong road, yet having a common objective point, all would be concentrating ; so, in the efforts of patriotic men to secure the nation's welfare, however much their guides may temporarily differ, all who ear- nestly desire peace, prosperity, and the preservation of their country's honor, must ultimately be found marching in the same direction. Our annual meetings serve to keep fresh in our minds, and in the minds of our people, the events of the war, and I would not have one page in the history of that struggle obliterated, but I would use it to strengthen our devotion to the country, and our determination to countenance nothing in politics, nothing in business, nothing even in social intercourse, which does not tend to the country's weal. The grand idea which ani- mated our armies during the strife was to place our national character in the high niche to which its illustrious ancestry enti- tled it, and to show the world that the descendants of Washing- ton, Gates, Green, Hamilton, and the fathers of the country, are capable of defending and preserving the free institutions we
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inherited from them. Now that the war is over, and the victory won, let us continue to emulate the glorious example of the revo- lutionary patriots, and devote ourselves to achieving new renown for our country by our devotion to the arts of peace. We have learned in the rough school of war to discipline and master our- selves, and we shall, by the application of this knowledge to the pursuits of civil life, gain bloodless victories, not less important than those achieved upon the tented field.
FIFTH TOAST ; - The Heroes of the Rank and File.
Speech of GENERAL S. A. HURLBUT :
COMRADES : It is just and becoming, Mr. President, that an assemblage like this should render honor to the Rank and File, and I am glad that the pleasant duty of responding to this toast has fallen upon me. No such body of men, in my judgment, were ever assembled as the volunteer army of the late war. History fails to give us such examples, for history has never yet had to deal with such a people as this. The mother was worthy of her sons, and the sons of their mother, for the army was the
child and representative of the nation. No troops ever stood for the honor of their flag, for the safety of their country, so thoroughly identified with the sentiment of the people, as did this Army of ours, which sprung into sudden and terrible life at the cry of the imperiled nation, fought through the long war with such singular tenacity, accepted, endured, aye, welcomed severe discipline as a necessity of success, and, having acquired the skill, steadiness, and unity of impulse of the veteran, yet at the end disappeared without a ripple in the great current and mass of the citizenship from which they sprang. To the eye of the stranger, toward the close of the war, one million of trained and disciplined soldiers hung over the future of the
Speech of General Hurlbut. 129
nation, pregnant with all evil and disquiet, as the Alpine avalanche impends over some sleeping village. But when the summer air of peace breathed softly over the land, this thing of terror silently dissolved into its elements, - with no torrents, no rush of waters-in many gentle streamlets, each of which made glad again some long desolate home. No other people could have produced such an army ; no other people could thus have absorbed them when their task was done, without perceptible shock to the commonwealth.
From all ranks, pursuits, and modes of life they came, these heroes of the Rank and File. The sun-burned plowman, the apt mechanic, the swart artisan, the pale student; from all trades, all professions, all industries they came - many earnest, thoughtful, devoted ; some moved by the wild spirit of adven- ture ; some for the mere excitement of the battle and the march ; some of high culture and education ; some with but little of either ; a strange, wild gathering of apparently discordant elements. Yet, under the fervent heat of love for an insulted country, and with the strong current of military discipline, they grew into the columns that swung with Grant round the beleagured Vicksburg, and at Champion Hills and Jackson · made vain the boastings of the Gibraltar of the Mississippi; they pried into that living rock which withstood Thomas at Chickamauga ; they shattered Hood at Nashville; and they became that plow of God, which, in the hands of Sherman, scarred the deep furrows of their march through the mountains, from Atlanta to the sea. They also formed that barrier of fire and steel on which Lee leaped to ruin at the heights of Gettys- burg ; they were that relentless giant hand that forced the Army of Northern Virginia from the Wilderness to Petersburg and the Appomattox, and shook the sheltered remnants of the Con- federate armies from the iron fingers, the paroled prisoners of the great Republic. Pittsburg Landing and Shiloh taught us early
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to respect the personal manhood of the Rank and File. It was somewhat awkward and unscientific fighting, but they struck hard in that strange and deadly conflict.
It has always seemed to me, Mr. President, that the courage, endurance and steadiness of our private soldiers had in it some- thing of the miraculous. With no rank to incite, with no promotion probable, with no future ambition, no hope even of special personal mention, they went forth to exhausting marches, to dreary midnight watchings, to the trench and the rifle pit, to the line of actual battle, to the storming column, to face death in all forms, to endure disease, to suffer the slow agony of the prison pen, ready to live when life was but endurance, ready to die when to die was duty. For these great actions and this great endurance, there must have been some efficient cause, and, as I read it, that cause was the love of country and the love of home. They could not come back dishonored, and they all meant to come home, and bent all their powers and energies to finish the work quickly and well and be again at home. No man of us who has worn the insignia of rank and command, but owes a free and hearty tribute to the Rank and File. Every badge of authority, from the bar of the subaltern to the quadruple star that worthily rests on the shoulder of the General of the Army, is the representative and the creature of the heroism of the Rank and File, mute but glorious witness to the self-denial of their lives, and the gallantry of their deaths. As the engineer uses and guides already existing forces, so this heroism of the Rank and File was the vast living power which it was consum- mate generalship to mold, direct and control. All honor, then, to our comrades, the living heroes of the Rank and File. All credit to the dead who died for us and our country.
" On Fame's eternal camping ground Their silent tents are spread, And glory walks her solemn round In the bivouac of the dead."
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Speech of General Hascall.
SONG by the Glee Club ; - " Sherman's March to the Sea."
SIXTH TOAST ; - The Army of the Ohio.
Speech of General MILO S. HASCALL :
FELLOW-CITIZENS OF THE ARMY, AND GENTLEMEN OF TIIE BOARD OF TRADE OF CHICAGO : Having recently been selected to respond to the toast which you have just heard read -" The Army of the Ohio"-in place of the distinguished Secretary of War, its former commander, you will readily appreciate the diffi- dence I feel in undertaking to fill the place of one at once so illustrious, and so well calculated to do the subject justice. I promise you, however, that my remarks shall possess at least one merit, which, according to a distinguished authority, who has done us the honor to be with us this evening, surpasses all others, and that is, they will be very brief.
That distinguished soldier and citizen, who was the orator for the Army of the Ohio, last evening, at the Opera House, did the subject such complete justice that little else need, or could be said, if the occasion and the time rendered it proper to indulge in · extended remarks. After what he has so well said in regard to the organization and campaigns of the Army of the Ohio, I will only further add some allusions to some of the noble spirits that offered up their lives during the different campaigns in which we were engaged. First and most prominent on the list of our departed heroes, stands the name of General William P. Saun- ders, who fell a short distance in front of the fort that now bears his honored name, at Knoxville, Tennessee. Of him it can be truly said, that he was the idol of our army. No one who was present at the time Longstreet was closing in upon Knoxville, will ever forget the almost reckless daring he manifested during the three days that Longstreet was closing in upon and investing
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