Ashtabula telegraph. (Ashtabula, Ohio) 1874-1880, 1879-12-12
Col. IngersOn on the Volunteers.
From his speech &C the Grand Rapids
Banquet In Chicago.


From his speech at the Grand RaPIdi
Banquet In Chicago.
''Tbe Volunteer Soldiers of the
Union Army'-They were defenders
Of humanity, the desCroyers of pre-
iudice, the breakers Of chains, and
in the name of the future, slew the
monster Of their time. They finish.
ed what the soldiers of the Revolu-
ton commenced. They have relii
the torch that fell from their august
hands and filed the world again
with light. They blotted out from
our statue books the laws passed by
hypocrites at the instigation of rob-
bers loud applause, and tore with
brave and indignant hands from the
Constitution Of the United States
that infamous clause that made men
the catchers of their fellow men.
[Applause. They made it possible for
Judges to be just, for statesmen TO
be honest. They broke the shsckles
from the limbs of slaves, from the
souls of masters, and from the
Northern brain. They kept our
country on the map of the world
and our flag in Heaven. Applause
They rolled the stone from the sep
ulchre of progress, and found there
in two angels clad in shining gar
rnents-Nationality and Liberty.
Loud applause.
The soldiers were the saYiors of
the Republic; they were the liberia
tors of men. In writing the Procla-
nation of Emancipation, Lincoln,
greatest of our mighty dead, whose
memory is as gentle as a Summer
air when reapers sing amid gather
ed sheaVes, copied with the pen
what the grand hands of brave com
rades had written with their swords.
TApplause. Grander than the
Greek, nobler than. the Roman, the
soldiers of the Republic, with patriot
ism as careless as the air, fought for
the rights of others, for the nobility
of labor, and battled that a mother
might own her child, that arrogant
idleness should not scar the back of
patient toll, and that our country
should not be a many headed mon
ster made of warning States, but a
Nation, sovereign, grand and free.
Applause. Blood was water,
money was leaves, and life was only
common air, until one flag fiOated
over one Republic, without master
and without a slave. And then was
asked the question, will a free peo-
pie voluntarily tax themselves to pay
q Nations debt p The soldiers
went home to waiting wives, to their
glad children, and to the girls they
loved. They went back to the fields,
the shops, the mines. They had not
been demoralized. They had been
ennoLled. [Cheers. Mocking at
reYerses, laughing at poverty, they
made a friend of toll. They said,
ave saved the Nations life, and
what is life without honor ?" They
worked and wrought, with all of
labor's royal sons, that every pledge
the Nation made might be redeem
ed. And their leader, having put a
shining band of friendship, girdle
Of elasped and loving hands around
the globe, came home to find, and
finds that every promise made in
war has now the ring and CLEAN of
gold. Enthusiastic cheers.
There is another question still.
Will the wounds of the war be heal
ed? l answer yes. The Southern
people must submit. Not to the
dictstion of the North, but to a Ma
tion's viii and the verdict of man
kind. Great applause. They
were wrong, and the time will come
when they will say that the people
are the victors who have been van
quished by the right. Freedom con-
quered them, and freedom will cul-
tivate their fields, will educate their
children, will weave robes of wealth,
will execute the laws and fill their
land with happy homes. Zap
plause The soldiers of the Union
saved the South as well as the North.
They gave US Nation. They gave
US liberty and their grand welcomes
have made tyranny the world over
as insecure as snow upon the lips of
volcanoes. Cheers.
And now let us drink to the Vol !
unteers, to those who sleep in un-
known and sunken graves, whose
names are known only to the hearts
they loved and left, of those who |
oft in happy dreams can see the |
footsteps of return. Let us drink to
those who died where lifeless famine |
mocked at want. Let us drink to
the manned, whose scars give mod |
esty a tongue. Let us drink to |
those who dared and gave to chance |
the care and keeping of their lives. |
Let Us drink to all the living and to |
all the dead-to Sherman and to |
and TO Grant, the laurell- |
ed soldiers of the world, and last to |
Lincoln, whose loving life, like a
bow of peace, spans and arches all
the clouds of war.
Eeable T.adIer-