The Cheyenne daily leader. [volume] (Cheyenne, Wyo.) 1870-1884, 1879-06-01
THE NATIONS DEAD.
Eloquent Decoration Day Grafton by
Hon. A Worth Spates.

AT the Literary club of Cheyenne,
His Excellency, Gov. Hoyt, presiding,
on the evening of Decoration Day,
Hon. A. Worth Spates, by request, de-
livered the following Grafton, which had
been prepared for the grand exercises
that had been arranged for the ceme-
terry, and which the bleak storm caused
to be abandoned:
Ladies and Gentlemen One of the
grandest tributes to the age in which
we live, is the fact that we turn aside
from life's beaten path to do homage to
the memory of those who, having
passed through ''the gates ajar," left
behind them footprints on the sands
of time.n God forbid that the dark
and gloomy period shall ever arrive
when WI shall forget the heroic dead
who lived not for themselves alone,
but made way for liberty and died. 8
and whose lives were a sacrifice to duty
most daring and sublime.
Thank heaven that they are not for
gotten amidst the stern realities of life,
as is eloquently attested by the hot
burning tear that trickles down affec-
TONS cheek on this hallowed day
throughout the length and breadth OF
the republic.
Aye, this very hour the mighty pulse
of the nation is stilled; that honor may
be rendered q nations dead and brave
men and beauteous women upon many a
sunlit hill top, and in many a shady
dell; strew the flowers of love-mute
messengers from above, upon that sa-
cred dust which has unto dust returned.
Whilst the peerless gem which it con.
tanned put on Immortality, and SCARED
aloft to dwell with angels forever, and
shine with a lustre brighter than the
morning stars that sang together al
earth's creation.
Descendants of the fathers of the
republic who died that the nation
might have birth-they were but the
legal successors to those blessings
which had been achieved by a pledge OF
life, fortune and sacred honor, and ac-
quired as the result of toll, ~privation
and death extorted amidst the
swamps and fields of the blazing south,
and amongst the bleak hills and valleys
of the chilling north, from a great and
powerful nation, antagonized by a
feeble band of patriots, who flashed
throughout the world the gladdening
announcement
THAT TO the hearts that liberty fiushes,
Resistance is idle and numbers q dream.
They break from control as the mountain
stream PUSHES
From It's fetterp OF ice, iu the warmth OF the
beam.'
Our gallant fathers, having carved
with the sword Of freedom a place
amongst the nations of earth, their
noble sons, whose graves are adorned
to-day, gave up their lives that it might
be preserved, a nation Redeemed, Re-
generated, D~isenthralled. Striking the
shackels from the American bondman,
and decreeing that where waved the
banner of the free, liberty should abide
in what is really the land of the free
and home of the braye. Standing in
this cemetery of the dead, my heart is
stirred to its very depths, as memory
wings its fight DER mountain and
stream to the millions of patriots who,
with saddened heart and tear dimmed
eye, bear the brightest gems garnered
in the laboratory of nature to an hun
dred thousand mounds Respondent in
the beauteous garb of May-queen of
the year-where sleep the heroes whose
death quenched the light in many a
sparkling eye, and shrouded in gloom
many a happy home; and who wait the
coming of Resurrection morn; when
wars shall have ceased, and strife pre-
vail no more. Methinks that Washing
ton, the founder, and Lincoln, the pre-
server of our republic, look down ap-
provingly from the battlements Of
heaven upon the sacred scene, whilst an
gels celebrate the event in sweetest
song and loudest praise.
The wal in which these martyrs died
was not without its benefits, for it
spread to the confines of earth the
intelligence that though we are people
following the ways of gentleness and
peace: yet when necessity demands we
are a nation of warriors, equal, if not
superior, to any that ever climbed
Alpine Heights with the great Napo-
leon, or charged over the CORY fields of
Waterloo with the iron duke of Brit
ANNA. Soldiers, who aroused, will
sweep down opposition as the hurri-
canes breath rends the mighty monarch
of the forest, and, like the old guard of
Napoleon, will die in their ranks but
never surrender. Unwise counsel
caused us to disagree, and that disa-
greement is perceptible in the SCARED
places of the south, and observed in
the vacant chairs of the north. The
booming guns of Sumter echoed
throughout the land the startling fact
t~hatpolitical indiscretion had triumphed
and bad men had succeeded in arraying
brother against brother; father against
son.. The nation trembled to its re-
hottest part, the union of our fathers
tossed wildly amidst the beating waves
of political discord, and that storm
which Clay, Webster and others fore
saw but could not avert, burst in all its