I need not add, gentlemen, that your patriotism, fortitude and perseverence proved that all you wanted was fair fields and favorable opportunities to accomplish as valuable and effective service as that achieved by any portion of the army. I cannot follow you through Virginia, Maryland, Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas and Texas. Time would not allow me even to glance at the weary marches, hardships, reverses and hard fought battles, brilliant and constitute a part of the imperishable fame of our country. But how changed the scene to-day. The clarion of war is no more heard upon the streets.
Hostile armies stand no longer confronting each other in deadly conflict.
It is with emotions like these that we congratulate you and proclaim welcome, thrice welcome to the brave boys and heroic hearts who placed the standard of the stars above those lofty palaces where once floated defiantly the flag of treason and rebellion. To the soldier himself it is gratifying to know that the sentiments of patriotism, the lessons of ancestral wisdom and heroic self devotion are not yet extinct in the land of his birth and love. It was upon occasions similar to the present that the citizens of ancient Rome would go out and meet the returning soldier with exulting shouts of joy, welcoming him at the gates, conducting him through the streets of the Capitol, beneath flower-wreathed and sculptured arches and from lofty porticos proclaim that the occasion should be commemorated as a National Holiday. In a kindred spirit we meet to-day, fellow comrades, and welcome you as part of a gallant army, who, battling for the preservation of Republican Government, have won laurels as glorious and brilliant as ever decked the brow of Roman conqueror or consul. Yes, laurels and fame imperishable, bathed in the heart's blood of many of your numbers.