Orleans County monitor. [volume] (Barton, Vt.) 1872-1953, 1878-06-17
EXTRACT OF AN ADDRESS DE-
LIVERED BY GEN. WILLIAM w.
CIRCUIT AT BURLINGTON, ON
DECORATION DAY.

Our own history shows this. Our grand
est triumphs are not to be found in the
cannon we have invented, nor in the
monitors we have built, though they
have revolutionized the navies of the
world, and to-day specimens of that
Yankee cheese-box on a raft which ap-
peared as revelation on that bright
March morning in 1862, in Hampton
Roads, may be found in the Bosphorus
and the Dardanelles.
Not, however, to the enginery of war
do we point in this Centennial era as
the greatest achievements of American
civilization. War with all its .'pomp
and circumstance" brought us blighted
fields and desolated homes, and we the
rather point to the nober trophies of
peace, TO ripened harvests and happy
firesides-to the work of the painter and
sculptor, of the poet, the novelist and
the historian who are, to-day, revelling
amid the enchantments of our legends,
traditions and history, and producing
new creations to cheer and elevate. We
point also to the triumphs of inventive
genius, which are every day turning la
Dor over to the willing servitude of steam
and Natures forces and bidding man
take time to think; and among these
triumphs, as essentially American, we
point to the steamboat that glides like
thing of life from continent to continent,
which has placed the eastern and western
hemispheres alongside each other, and
in its swift march has revolutionized the
commerce of the world. We point also
to that other American wonder: to the
tanned lightning, the errand boy of the
period, the click of whose distinct little
voice is heard from beyond the mount
aims and from across the mighty deep.
Great as we have been in war, we are
greater still in these and kindred
achievements-greater in the develop
ment of our free institutions greater in
the mental culture which comes of our
free public schools-those unsectarian
nurseries whence have sprung nation
of intelligent freemen; greater also in
the spiritual growth which is begotten
of our free religion in short, greater in
all those mental and moral qualities
without which our war record, brilliant
as it is. would be but sounding brass. ~
And this field, comrades, is still open to
you. The problem, too, of how forty
millions people, SO recently destroying
each other with all the dread machinery
OF war, can be brought back to good fell
lowship and to fraternal concord without
surrender of the great principles on
which the contest was waged is with
you and others of your generation to
solve; to you, also, and others of your
generation is left the high duty of pre-.
serving and transmitting unimpaired our
matchless >institutions-and this, my
friends. is no small work.
1t is easy to speak of the grandeur
and glory of the Republic; easy to re.
count her triumphs in war and in peace
and easy, too, to raise the curtain upor
, a brilliant future but this covers only
one side of the picture. The other en-
/. braces the vicissitudes and trials of pop
. ular government, in which the theory is
5 that each man is, at the same time, botl
. a sovereign and subject. Though W,
a all believe that government of the peo
e pie is the only one under which man cal
ever reach his highest earthly estate, ye
, 1t must not be forgotten that it is ON
full of peril-full of incendiary element
{ which the slightest commotion may kin
5 die into spontaneous confagration
r Our own government, strong as it ha
: proven itself to be, is by no means fire.
n from these disturbing influences. They
exist in the very immenseness of our do
IT main in the variety of our climate am
d productions in the diversity of our in
q terests and pursuits and more largel
. still, in the ignorant masses of that het
e erogeneous population who are fockin
to our shores from every quarter of tn
E. globe, and are to-day tramping up an
l down the country hungry as an army {
le N locusts. Add to this the vague rumol
70 OF armed men already organized and O.
as fcered for the purpose of settling th
vexed question between capital and |;
in Dor, and making things right betwee
" the rich and poor-which means nothin
he but an equal distribution of propert,
70 Remember also the millions in the Sout
- still in ignorance, and as yet but poorl
qualified for the exercise of this doub
n duty of sovereign and subject.
u- Then add to all this the rancoro,
or party spirit Of the day, which seldom
a our history has appeared more violen
=. and tell me: Exists there no chan
at for jar among these strange and inco
gruous elements Though perhaps N
or imminent, it lies among the continge
les cies of the future; and as against tn
time when civil tumult shall again lig
Ter the fires of intestine war, methinks
- = hear the soldier-dead calling out to t
living ssHava obar;ty ~ and ,ot .