Nebraska advertiser., 1868-09-17
An Eloquent Speech by Gen.
Sherman.

/ Yours, jas MINICK,
An Eloquent speech by Gen.
Sherman.
Contrast the following extract from
Lieut.. Gen. Sherman's speech, at the
annual reunion of the Army of the
Tennessee. in st. Louis, last NOvena-
ber with Frank Blair's revolutionary
letter:
How has this punishment been
partitiOned by the result Of this war
We of the North have to mourn the
loss of fathers, brothers, sons and
| friends, and are burdened with vast
national debt, binding on us in fact,
in law and honor, never, I hope, to be
questioned by any honorable man in
| America till every cent is paid.
"LOok at the South, and you who
went with me through that land can
best say ifthey too, have not been fear
fully punished. Mourning in every
house. hold; desolatiOn written in hard
characters across the whole face Of
their country; cities in ashes, and
fields laid waste; their commerce gone
their system of labor annihilated and
destroyed. ruin, poverty and distress
everywhere, and now pestilence adj
ding the cap-sheaf to their stock of
misery; her proud men begging for
pardon; and appealing for permission
to raise food for their children; her
1000. 600 of slaves free, and their value
lost to their former masters forever.
"How any Southern gentleman,
with these facts plain and palpable
everywhere staring him in the face
and recorded forever in the book of
history, can still boast of his lost
causen or speak Of it in language other
than that of shame and sorrow, passes
my understanding; and instead of be-
ing revived, know that their lost
cause will sink deeper into infamy as
time more keenly probes its hidden
mysteries and revels them to the light
of day.
/" Now that slavery is gone, and gone
forever, with its unhappy wrecks left
behind, and all danger is past of any
set of men again appealing to war
when they have courts to secure their
rights and redress their wrongs, I
would trust our national destiny
against those grand old national laws
which raised our country through the
long, tedious vassalage of colonization
which carries us safely through the
ordeal of our revolutionary war, made
our flag famous on the high seas in
1912. led our cOnquering army to the
gates of Mexico in 1847, and has borne
US gloriOusly through four years of as
hard a war as ever tested the manhood
of any people;
" Let us revive, as far as lies in our
individual power that system which,
Bancroft tells, guided our fathers be-
fore the revOlutiOn-the system which
has been reveled in Judea-the system
which combines and perfects the
wisdom of the Orient, and
rejecting genius of Greece--the system
conforming to reason, yet kindling
with enthusiasm; always fastening
reform, yet always conservative pro-
claiming absolute equality among
men, yet not suddenly abolishing the
unequal institutions of society; guar
anteeing absolute freedom, yet, invOl-
wing the inexOrable restrictions of
duty in the highest degree theo-
Tetical, vet in the highest degree
practical awakening the inner man
to a conciousness of his destiny, and
yet adapted with exact harmony to
the outer world at once divine and'I
human. This system was prOfessed
in every part of our widely extended
country, and cradeled our freedom.
with such a spirit pervading all
our country once more; with our pop
ulatiOn increasing thirty-three per
cent every ten years with our national
wealth developing in even a greater
ratio; with our frontiers pushing back
in every direction; with farms and
villages and cities rapidly covering
our vast domain; with mines of gold
and silver and iron and coal, pouring
out wealth faster than ever did the
cotton fields of the south; with forty
thousand miles of finished railroads
and other thousands in rapid progress
can any one doubt our present
or calculate our future des-
tiny? If our friends at the South will
heartily and cheerfully join with us
in this future career / for one would
welcome them back our eqUals-but
not our superiOrs- applause.], and
lend them a ahelpnig hand; but if, like
spoiled children, they cling to the
dead past and shut their eyes to the
OOL1AlS AutulCl WOuAu O1Ay CoA I41ctI
to that wave of emigration
that has swept over our land from the
Atlantic to the Pacific, and must soon
turn back and flow South. Ap
plause. They may oppose, but their
will be as vain as it was
for them to try to stop the Army of
the Tennessee, which swept the length
and breadth of their land. The next
wave of Northern invasion will not
desolate their land, but will fructi9y
and regenerate it.