The Portland daily press., 1879-06-04
Striking Memorial Address.
Wendell Phillips on the Lessons of The
Day.

| i'0leu ny Nehuel fhllllpS, decoration Day
before the Grand Army post at Brighton,
Mass;
These are hours devoted to great memories,
| devoted to remembering the men to whom
under God, we owe the greatest of religious
and civil privileges, all that digniies humans
! ty and makes progress possible, blessings that
| nave been bought at great sacrifice of life, at
great cost OF treasure, and of devotion that
man In his extreme heroism can show. The
memory OF the gallant deeds of our forefathers,
VINO made the first sacrifices, float back into
history, and to-day we are reminded that our
! laws and our liberty and our hopes have been
bought second time, and that we stand to-day
Slrt about with rights and privileges that repre-
sent hundred battle-felds, a half million of
nVes and unmeasured treasure poured out for
| us. Credit, credit to the men the latchets fo
whose shoes we are hardly worthy to unloose
Is the lesson OF to-day, is the memory which
| crowds upon it. would have YOU remember
that America stands founded on sacrifice,
anchored on self-devotion; that those savage
Wllds, those distant States once subdued by the
sacrlnce OF two generations, were baptized
| again In admirable self-devotion by young men
| who crowded to the front when the very es-
sence OF our civilization and liberty was in
danger. What construction can we put fairly
| on that enthusiasm of 1861, on that grand up
rising which astonished even us standing close
| to It, and was a marvel to the other nations of
the earth? What went they forth to save?
| Some men say ''They went to save the flag.
| 1t was sentiment" Well the Barbary States
| had flag, the Emperor of Morocco has o flag
| 1t was a flag that covered slaves and pirates
There have been no admirers for men that
| went forth to save that flag. No enthusiasm
| would have gathered around their memories
consecrating their names, celebrating, as the
years rolled by, the graves that hold their dust.
| What was it; what is it that makes the flag
the piece of bunting, the stars and stripes?
What was it that swept out of the colleges
the rising class, Just ready to assume the re-
sponsibilities of life, into the camp and half of
hon into fIasr no
who had sneered at John Brown march up
State street to the time that his soul was
marching on? The young men swept down
the swift current of an African river were
found with their dead dodies enveloped in the
British flag, saving it from the hands of the
savage foe. What meant that bunting to them?
They knew that wherever the sun shone,
that flag meant justice to an Englishman.
When the colored corporal crawled off the
battlefield bearing the remnants of the flag,
uttering the immortal words, ''The dear old
flag never touched the ground what did that
nag mean to him? 1t meant a nation, forty
States, one instead of forty My friends it
was that flag which your young men carried
down the Gulf to save. 1t was not, however
bare union; it was not merely national law,
The motto upon the shield of Massachusetts, is,
mo peace till liberty is achieved" One can
read between the lines of history that it was
not nationality merely which summoned you
to the front. 1t was nationality that wrote
upon the banner as it kissed the Gulf, Justice
and liberty.
Why do L insist upon this to-day? What is
your duty to-day? To strew their monuments
with flowers, embalm their names in rounded
periods? What do you owe to the dead? You
owe them to watch watch with vigilance sim
sincerity, foresight, intelligence, that what
they gave their lives to gain their children
may have. You and your comrades, with
drawn swords and bayonets fixed, marched up
at the cannon's mouth and gained a danger
ovs point, planted the flag there-a point and
fortress of which other men disputed with
you the possession. What is your duty to-day,
comrade? 1t is to see that no matter what
storm breaks, nor what eonvulsion shakes the
earth, the flag floats undisturbed forever. The
clouds are dark, they come close TO the earth
men run to and fro and are confused, astounded
We don't know what next may be revealed to
us. Would to God-and speak under a roof
dedicated to the worship of God of love and
peace-would to God there was o chance that
the enemy would draw the sword and face you
in battle array. Unmasked attack, outspoken,
blank, square denial of the flag you went down
to save and plant ON the edge of the Gulf Won
would meet as you met it in 1861, with ban
nerS flying, with marshalled ranks with a
steady front. If there is ever war again on
this continent for the maintenance of our in
stitutions, the men will start mn as bold as
eager, as easily marshalled and as devoted as
the young men were in 1861. But all history
attests that the people are never robbed of their
rights. There is hardly one page in the histo-
ry of our race, where the majority have been
robbed. 1t is an axiom of craftsmanship that
the people, when they lose their rights that
they are cheated out.of them. Know YOU that
by cunning phrase, plausible arguments, pre-
tence, double dealing and confusion of party
lines, the people are led blindly till the preci-
plce is reached and plunging over it the fatal
submission is made. Remember, the people,
when they lose their rights are always cheated
out OF them. BY cunning statutes, curious ar
rangemenos of methods hidden under gentle
phrases the people are lulled to sleep. and
when they wake they wake in chains.
Where IS the danger to-day? 1t is not in the
men who have passed. through the experience
OF the years from 1850 to 1860, and who born
OF that convulsion, went down to the war, but
the men who are thirty to-day were in their
teens when that fearful lesson was reading
To-day they have the power, they are treading
on your footsteps, they are the young, ardent,
enthusiastic front rank of the youth of Mas
sachusetts They have not behind them, as
you have behind you that grand lesson of from
1850 to 1890-Sumner in the Senate chamber
borne down by assassin blows, Garrison dragged
through the streets These have foated back
unwritten and almost unheeded into the twi-
light of the past. To-day the same band which
has had enough of bullets, which will never
again provoke the violent resistance of the
arm OF the nation, means to get out of the bal
lot what the bullet gained, through the ma
chinery and chicanery of politics.
Bepublicanism is ON trial. 1t bore the brunt
of arms bravely. Europe said the republic has
gone to pieces. They didn't believe in uni-
versal suffrage, but when half million of
men went GOWN 10 the Gulf, Gladstone and
Russell and Palmerston stood with you, and in
the very presence of Garrison, who has Just
gone to his grave, Russell begged pardon on
platform of 5000 Englishmen for the unbelief
which he betrayed in 1861. Republicanism has
borne that ordeal and survived it. Democracy
has written its undying record in the immortal
contest for existence between 1861 and 1865
and when the world hastened to our funeral
and was confronted with victory she slulked
home ashamed. Universal suffrage floating
with every foot on it wet is the strongest craft
that sails the sea. As Fisher Ames said:
Aristocracy is a frigate, modelled with great
sagaeity, her spars and her hull a victory of
science, but single flaw or leak will sink her
fathoms below the surface. Democracy is
raft, every mans feet constantly wet, but no
storm can sink her; she can do nothing but
float LApplause.l Europe believes that to-
day.
But the trial you are undergoing now is
more fearful and searching than that. 1t is,
have you the craftsmanship, the patience the
Self-control, the far-reachng sagacity, the tire
less vigilance like an aristocracy,-have you all
these prompt, ready to marshal to save what
the sword gained? Magnanimity! The blood
that was shed we forgot; Libby prison and An
dersonville we looked out of sight; the mil
lions of debt under which the nation staggered
was put out of sight, and we said to the erring
section, before it had even professed readiness:
Come back under the flag, with rights re-
stored, with punishment omitted, with no stain
on your civil rights capacity; come back and
enjoy all we have protected, all we have
achieved" But magnanimity is a childish in-
discretion; it is nothing but weakness. 1t is
worse than weakness, it is folly. 1t is worse
than folly, it is base ingratitude to the men
that died for us. AS bad as that it makes your
monument hypocrite, if you don't sit up day
and night, waive ALI distinctions, bury all
party lines in one grand solemn resolution to
keep forever what they gained That is the
one resolution that becomes the day. That is
the lesson that those still lips would utter. /
heard the father of five sons, four of whom
went down to the war to come not back again,
dying, each one in bloody encounter in the
very foremost edge of battle-I heard such
father say as he scanned day by day the record
of political convulsion and changes, "Was it
for this that gave up my boys? Was it for
this they broke mothers heart and could not
come back even to her grave?" And said to
him, 'It was not for this" This is not the
end. Behind this empty pretence of states
manship, lower down and deeper than these
idle divisions of party and the empty speeches
of so-called statesmen, there fingers deep in
the peoples heart, ready when the hour calls,
a resolution that will be expressed, and in the
name Of it everything for which you are pray