USA > Ohio > Circulars, papers and annual meeting of the Ohio commandery of the Military order of the loyal legion during the year > Part 6
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Grant and Sherman, Hancock and Sheridan, and Thomas
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and Meade, and Fighting Joe Hooker (who sweetly sleeps in your beautiful Spring Grove), and a long list of great com- manders enrolled their names high up in the roll of the great captains of the world. [Applause.]
The two millions of men who shouldered muskets and buckled on the sabre formed an army which, in its magnitude and battles, is unequalled in the history of warfare. Peace came at last, and liberty had a new and broader meaning in the light of universal freedom.
The nation, redeemed and regenerated by its baptism of fire and blood, stands to-day the grandest among the nations of the earth.
The colossal figure of that great period, the big brained and great hearted Lincoln, raised from the humblest rank of the people, became the Chief Magistrate of the people and of the nation. [Loud applause. ]
As he stood on the bloody battle field of Gettysburg, at the burial place of the glorious dead who are sleeping there, his prophetic vision revealed to him the glorious ending of the struggle in which he was engaged, and the proud destiny of the nation when victorious peace should perch upon his banners.
To his prophetic mind we were to be not simply a Gov- ernment of the people. He looked to the great consummation beyond, and in the presence of the glorious dead, and by their sacred memories,invoked the living words of most solemn and pathetic eloquence to renewed efforts and greater sacrifices that the "Government of the people, by the people, and for the people " might not perish from the earth. [Applause.]
11 THE OLD FLAG."
"Its defense the one lesson of patriotism."
First Lieutenant JAMES S. OSTRANDER, Richmond, Ind.
COMMANDER AND COMPANIONS :
Impressed with the grandeur of my theme, conscious of the lack of wit and words to give it tongue, I speak to-night for the glory of the " Old Flag." Hear me for my cause ! [Applause.]
From the time warrior-born man first buckled on the sword to maintain supremacy by force of arms, some symbol of sovereign might-dyed in the colors of nature-has blazed at the front on every contested field of pagan or of Chris- tian land.
Whether it has been the standards of Israel sweeping clear the country promised 'mid the thunderings and thick darkness of Sinai; the eagles of Rome in their lofty flight from the mouth of the Euphrates to the summit of the Gram- pian Mountains ; the Bees of Napoleon buzzing on Spanish heights and chilled in Russian snows; or the Stars and Stripes of "old glory" crowning the blood-stained slopes of Gettysburg [applause], waving in beauty above the clouds of Lookout, [applause,] some chosen emblem of unity and power has ever shown nations the path to victory and taught heroes how to die. [Loud applause. ]
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Men seal their devotion to an idea, a principle, with their lives ; but the mind is so constituted that the abstract thought must have material existence, and this the flag supplies, for by some occult process of transubstantiation it becomes in the eyes of the patriot the visible State, the embodiment of all that is grand and good and true in the structure of the nation ; its defense the one lesson of patriotism, treason to its cause the unpardonable sin. [Loud applause.]
Our flag-" The Old Flag," as we are pleased to term it-is not old as the years of nations are counted. A little span of an hundred years bridges the river of Time that rolls between the then and now. But in that century of life is ¡compassed more of human progress, more of grandeur and glory, than the world has witnessed since the morning stars sang together. Young, as the hours are numbered on a dial ; full of years, in the splendor of its matchless fame. [Applause.]
Born on a battle-field, an infant Hercules cradled on the brazen shield of Mars, the thunders of Saratoga sang its first lullaby. Its young life lightened the gloom of Valley Forge and cheered the great heart of Washington. It learned the alphabet of glory, writing with the sword on British hearts the names of Germantown, and Monmouth, and Cowpens, and Yorktown. [Loud applause.]
In vigorous youth it answered the menace of its heredi- tary foe with the glories of Niagara and New Orleans, Erie and Champlain. It led a forlorn hope of gallant souls from the Rio Grande to the city of the Aztec Kings, and on the plains of Mexico fluttered the old civilization " like an eagle in a dove cote."
And when its infant highness came of age-Why trace further the fortunes of the flag? Here are they who have written the grandest pages of its history in their blood ; who have blazoned its every fold with great names and valorous deeds that will still live on when all of us are mute.
We saw its stars go down in darkness at Sumter. We
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watched its varying fortunes through the night of war. Four ponderous years its colors hung like an avenging Nemesis bathed in the lurid clouds of battle. We saw it in the hour of victory, when the last field was won. Scarred, with the wounds of deadly strife ; tattered, in the tempest of conflict ; stained, with the red record of battle. A flag of shreds and patches. Royalty in rags ! but "every inch a king !" And when the light of that April morning irradiates its folds the last shackle of bondage is melted in the fervent heat of patriotism, the one blot of shame gone from our escutch- eon. [Loud applause.]
Liberty endures ! Mourning with the heart of Rachel for the noble sons that were, and are not! Rejoicing with the voice of Miriam over the gallant living who came from the jaws of death bearing victory on their colors !
"Treason has done its worst." That cause is ever lost whose utmost aim reaches no higher than a crime. [Long and loud applause.] It strutted its brief hour on the world's stage and reaped the whirlwind of a free people's indignation. Read now !- in the immortal names flaming on every s ripe of our sky-born banner-the echoing thunders of its wrath. There is Donaldson and Shiloh and Vicksburg, Murfreesboro and Mission Ridge and Atlanta, Gettysburg and Petersburg and Appomattox, and there they will remain forever! The Nation lives ! Advance your standard ! peerless Republic. "Not a stripe erased, not a star obscured." O, banner of beauty and glory ! Glinted by the first rays of the morning, as you crown the blue waters of the Atlantic, a beacon of liberty to all the lands; kissed by the light of noonday as you wave over the great Mississippi Valley and spread your protecting shadow in majestic sweep from the unsalted seas to the land of the Montezumas ; gorgeous in the golden sunset of that far occident, whose rivers tumble to the tide and hear no sound, save their own dashing; gathering a continent in your embrace, sheltering one great country under the benison of one mighty flag. Your flag ! misguided Southrons. Your
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flag ! men of the Northland. Doubly your flag ! companions of the Legion ; tenderly protecting, staunchly supporting, mother at once and wife. Who shall declare divorce?
At the close of his remarks Companion Ostrander received a perfect ovation. The applause was thundering, and a score or more of Companions crowded around to congratulate him.
"Our Comrades of the Grand Army of the Republic."
"They left the ploughshare in the mould, The flocks and herds without a fold, The sickle in the unshorn grain, The corn half garnered on the plain, And mustered in their simple dress, For wrongs to seek a stern redress. To right those wrongs, come weal, come woe, To perish or o'ercome the foe!"
CAPT. J A. WATROUS, Wisconsin Commandery.
COMMANDER AND COMRADES :
No tongue so silvery, no word so golden, no eloquence so inspiring that it is too silvery, too golden and too eloquent for use in responding to this toast.
Made up, as it is, of men who, in their country's hour of greatest peril, cared less for personal comfort, personal safety and the preservation of their lives than they did for that starry banner and the preservation of the Republic of which it is the beautiful emblem, it may as justly be called the Grand Army of Patriots as the Grand Army of the Republic.
The man who can not produce that strongest test of the highest type of patriotism-evidence of an honorable dis- charge from the army or navy-bearing a date covered by the war period, must ever ask in vain for membership in the Grand Army of the Republic.
It is an organization whose ties of friendship and com- radeship are more than ties ; they are very chains of iron and bands of steel, more powerful in binding men to each other than a combination of the ties fraternal in other societies, for
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they are chains and bands made in a cause both great and holy, by a service both noble and patriotic, and at times when the stoutest-hearted and bravest of men were tested to the quick.
These comrades, when young men, stood in battle line elbow to elbow, and bared their breasts to showers of lead and storms of iron, and they did it because they loved their country and would preserve it.
Truer patriots than are found in the Grand Army of the Republic, and among the men from whom it recruits, the world has never seen, and never will see.
To-day, in common with the Nation's 55,000,000 of peo- ple, all free, they are enjoying the fruits of the victory which cost them and their fallen comrades most dearly.
In five thousand posts, standing shoulder to shoulder and heart to heart, may be found 250,000 of these well-tried men who, almost a quarter of a century ago, helped to make up the grand armies of the Union ; who helped to make the long, solid walls of blue which stood between the life of the Repub- lic and an ignominious death. Many of them are bending with age, whose touch is frosting their heads. But within the breasts once buttoned in blue there are hearts which will be warm, and loving, and sympathetic, and young so long as they are permitted to pulsate.
In all of these posts are found comrades and brothers who are such in the truest sense of the terms.
In the Grand Army there are no generals, colonels, majors, captains or lieutenants ; no admirals, rear admirals, commodores or commanders : all are comrades.
The man who wore the two stars of the major-general sits by the side of the man who was starless, birdless, leafless, barless and chevronless, and they clasp hands as comrades.
The boy who trudged along in the ranks, burdened with knapsack, haversack, canteen, gun and equipments, breaks away from his duties as general manager of a great railroad to spend an hour with his comrades, among whom he finds
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his old colonel-an auctioneer. Rank separated them in the service, but in the Grand Army the general manager, who in the field wore the plain blue coat, without as much as a chev- ron to keep him from standing guard, does not rank the man who rode at the head of his regiment with an eagle on each manly shoulder, but who now chatters to mixed audiences in the auction store.
The private who is at the head of a leading wholesale house in his city looks at his watch on post night and says : "Come, general, let us go over and see the old boys," and the great merchant and his book-keeper, who twenty years ago commanded a brigade, lock arms, go to the hall, salute the Commander, who was a corporal, and they are with the "old boys," and they are happy.
The sergeant, who is a congressman now, wears the little metal badge with as much pride as his former captain does, who drives a span of mules hitched to a bob-tailed street car.
Generals Grant and Sherman, and Logan and Sheridan, are on a level with Privates Smith and Jones, and Brown and Green. They all rank as comrades. The greatest events of their lives occurred while they were winning that rank of honor and eminent distinction. They look back to those stir- ring events, drop a tear to the memory of those who fell by their sides, and with swelling hearts look up and thank God that they were able to play a part in the great war drama ; that they had a hand in shielding from disgrace and danger that grand National emblem; that they helped to save the Republic.
America well knows what these aging veterans of the army and navy accomplished during the years of dread war, and we have a right to believe, and we do believe, that every sincere lover of the American Government and its institutions appreciates their services-knows that to their valor and to their patriotism the world is indebted for the grandest and most perfect Republic mortal eyes have ever looked upon.
The people have seen these soldiers and sailors, after their
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long, hard and dangerous service, return to the paths of peace and take their places by the side of; and as the equals of, the country's most useful citizens. They have seen a grateful nation tap the shoulders of three comrades and lead the way to the most exalted station known to civilization-the Presi- dency of the United States; and braver, honester, manlier characters never held the place. We turn our faces toward the distinguished companion and comrade who presides on this occasion, and would speak our thanks to him for his great services as a soldier and as a President, and for the noble ex- ample he and Mrs. Hayes set in the White House.
The people have gone to the ranks of our comrades for Governors, Senators and Representatives, and they find none who serve them better.
They see in the professions great numbers of lights daz- zling with brilliancy-men who were once soldiers, guarding the sacred trusts which came to us from Washington and his companion patriots.
They see these comrades in every manly walk of life, and, seeing, honor them. But we may doubt if the general public comprehends the remaining missions of the old vet- erans.
Do the people know that every post of the Grand Army of the Republic is taking advanced ground in the important work of giving the country a true history of the mighty strug- gle for liberty and union? Do they know that the choicest war literature has its inspiration at the post meetings?
Do they know that each of the camp-fires, whose high- reaching flames light the valley, the prairie, the hillside and the mountain top, are normal schools from which go forth well-trained educators in patriotism; go as the sons and neighbors of the veterans-veterans whose love for country and flag is so intense that those who meet them catch the spirit? This country can not have too many such educators.
Do the people realize the value of the lessons in patriot- ism which all old soldiers unite in imparting ; that they will
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bear rich, ripe fruit in the centuries to come ; that the times long past the year 2,000 will feel the effects of the Grand Army heart-beats of 1885?
Do they know that these lessons teach men that they can not too sincerely and too deeply love the American nation ; that they can make no sacrifice in its behalf which is too great?
These are some of the missions of the Grand Army of the Republic.
I wish all could know, as I think I know, of the love, sympathy, patriotism and pure gold there is in the Grand Army of the Republic, and among the men who are eligible to membership.
I wish they could see, as I think I can see, a million pairs of eyes, many of them in tears, centered upon a home in the new world's metropolis, and know of a million hearts rounded up with love and sympathy for that grand old hero, the great commander of commanders, who is to-day walking in the gloom of physical pain and mental agony.
Poor, dear, brave old General Grant, how all our hearts ache for you. Were the lightnings to flash word to the sur- vivors of that mighty host you led to victory, telling them that a refusal to accept would not greet them, to-morrow's sun would look down upon a vast army of old veterans joyously placing at your disposal a ready million of dollars. And their rest and sleep would be sweeter, and they would feel richer for having reinforced you when reinforcements were needed. Old commander, but speak your consent, and then prime your ears to hear the merry ringing of a shower of silver and gold.
If the country should be imperiled during the next five years, and men of iron nerves were needed to shield it from insult and ruin, an army of such men, recruited from the Grand Army of the Republic, could be assembled as speedily as steam could whirl them over the land, and an hour from the time of assembling they would be ready for a great battle. If such peril comes-which God forbid-it must come soon if
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the old veterans respond. Their stay on earth will be all too brief. Only a few years can pass ere the angels reach down from heaven and lift to the golden pave the last hero of the Grand Army of the Republic, there to enjoy a reunion with the millions who fought that the American nation might live.
"LOYALTY."
"Thy hand hath made our Nation free ; To die for her is serving thee."
Companion Gen. SAMUEL FALLOWS, Illinois Commandery.
MR. PRESIDENT, COMPANIONS, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN :
We only think consecutively in language. Reason and speech are so firmly wedded together, that no court of man is competent to divorce them. Loyalty is a word just as inseparably linked with love of country. It may be intensive when the country is small, and both intensive and extensive when the country is great ; but it must always go beneath and go around the object of worthy patrial devotion. When the thirteen original States of this Nation formed their Union, they became one undivided and indivisible whole. Heaven itself pronounced the binding sentence, "Whom God hath joined togther, let no man put asunder."
The grim humor of the Colonial statesman expressed one phase of the importance of this Union when the Declaration of Independence was signed. "Gentlemen," said he, "we must hang together, or we shall hang separately." Like the various parts of the living human organism, these States were distinguished in function, but not divided in essence. The powers of man are distinct, as reason, affection and will, but not separate in the mind in which they exist. The whole soul is in every part, and every part in the whole soul. So the whole country was in every State, and every State forever in the whole country. Loyalty to this principle was the animat-
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ing spirit of the North in our late civil contest. It was loy- alty, also, to the deathless interests of the world, for that flag, above us, the ensign of the royalty of man, was the symbol of every idea of progress for which the ages had struggled since time began. The best blood of the world's representa- tive nations flowed in the veins of the Loyal Legions who were trooping, and tramping, and triumphing under its starry folds.
The cause they were espousing was the inspiration of the world's faith ; it was the aspiration of the world's hope, and its success was to be the coronation of the world's joy.
The watch-fires they kindled were fed from celestial altars. The supremacy of their principles was the necessary prelude to the coming down of the New Jerusalem out of heaven upon the earth. It was loyalty lifted into ecstasy by religion that made us sing, --
" Thy hand hath made our Nation free; To die for her is serving thee."
When the sun burst forth out of the lingering clouds at Appomattox, and from the tears of the Nation gladness made the bow of promise to span our sky, it was then the "bulls and bears" of Wall street stopped their roaring and growling, and with voices swelling with emotion helped sing the glorious Te Deum that went over the Continent and around the globe,
" Praise God, from whom all blessings flow."
Now that the years are so swiftly receding from the glori- ous culmination of that long protracted struggle, a deeper and a broader meaning should be given to the loyalty of the American people. Everything that can be done to bring about a community of ideas and create new bonds of sympathy between the North and the South, consistent with truth and justice, with honor and righteousness, should be continually devised and faithfully carried out. It is to me personally an unspeakable pleasure to say that the Confeder- ate officer who fired the first shot, by General Beauregard's
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order, against the flag of the Union floating over the "Star of the West," has become doubly endeared to my heart by our common toils in helping lift up the freedmen of South Caro- lina, and by his position as a brother Bishop in the same house of faith, we are one now in love and loyalty to our glorious Republic. And I know that I share with you, and with multitudes of our brave soldiers here represented, the fervent wish that National reconciliation on the same basis may speedily be complete.
It will be an act that we all shall gratefully appreciate if the present Congress shall at once do simple justice to the foremost Captain of his time, and one of the greatest sol- diers of the centuries, who has met foes stronger than he con- fronted at Shiloh and in the Wilderness, and who is now bending that head, never bent before on any battle-field, to accident, sickness and sorrow. May the Father of mercies compass about with songs of deliverance our grand old Com- mander, Gen. Grant.
But events have just occurred which cause us serious thought and great concern of mind. The attempt has been made by some in the Senate of the United States to empty loyalty of its one unchangeable meaning, and to reduce the purport of our whole conflict, in the language of one of the most expressive of our Western phrases, "to the small end of nothing whittled down to a point." It surprises us that we have to use of them at this period of time the softened lan- guage of Shakspeare : (and I must beg pardon of the great philosopher of poetry for presuming to modify his sentiment.)
" Thus do all such men. If their purgation did consist in words, They are as innocent as grace itself."
This ought not so to be. While we point with pride to the fact that the courtesy shown to the vanquished by our Generals, and our armies were so transcendent as to be un- paralleled in the history of mankind -- that the amnesty by the Nation was so sweeping that only one arch mover of se-
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dition was exempt from its unexampled provisions ; yet for the sake of the three hundred thousand Union dead ; for the sake of the two hundred thousand Confederate dead ; for the sake of your children and your children's children, and equally of those of the gallant men who so stubbornly opposed you ; for the sake of a perpetuity of that peace which you won at such a fearful cost; for the sake of the liberties of the race you enfranchised ; for the sake of that future, opening up so full of glorious promise when the final surrender of the Confederacy was fondly hoped to mean the everlasting downfall of seces- sion and slavery ; for the sake of the purity and the power of that regnant language we speak, to be spoken, perhaps, in a hundred years from now by a hundred of million of men- we are compelled to say to these spoiled children of mercy, in the councils of the Nation, we must not, we can not, we will not confound together the words and things which are as distinct as light from darkness, truth from error, life from death.
If to plan for the safety of the best government the world has ever known be a most reasonable act, to plot for its over- throw must be a most treasonable deed. If to fight with a determination never before known for its preservation is loy- alty, to fight with a desperation never before equaled for its destruction must be disloyalty. If General Sherman -- God bless him !- was a most ardent patriot, Jefferson Davis must have been -- a most antithetical patriot.
Let us fill anew this golden chalice of loyalty with the pure wine of unfaltering love for our whole country -- wine only less dear than sacramental wine itself -- a country never to mean a petty state, insulating and isolating, but the broad, unobstructed expanse, stretching from sea to sea, and from the British possessions to the Gulf.
"HUMANITY IN WAR."
"How glorious fall the valiant. sword in hand, In fronts of battle, for their native land !
* beautiful in death the boy appears, The hero boy, that dies in blooming years; In man's regrets he lives, and woman's tears ; More sacred than in life, and lovelier far,
For having perished in the front of war."
Companion JAMES E. MURDOCH, Cincinnati.
Sir Philip Sidney, the gallant courtier and tender-hearted warrior-poet of the time of good Queen Bess, received his death-wound fighting in the Netherlands against Spanish tyranny.
It is said, that being carried off the field, and while wait- ing the offices of the surgeon, faint with loss of blood and the agony of his wound, he asked for a cup of water, but, as he was about to drink, he saw a wounded soldier looking long- ingly at him. He at once handed the cup to the man, saying : " Drink, thy necessities are greater than mine."
If, as Shakspeare says, the angels mourn over the follies of man, how much more must they joyfully weep over brave and generous deeds. So angelic tears, to borrow a thought from Sterne, must have blotted out whatever of evil had been previously written against Sir Philip's name, when the record- ing angel wrote down the story of that cup of water and the suffering soldier.
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