Orleans County monitor. [volume] (Barton, Vt.) 1872-1953, 1881-01-10
Gen. John SedgWick.


If l felt that any degree of RESPONSE
bility attached to me for my appearance
on this occasion, other than perhaps a
certain lack of moral courage to resist
the fattering invitation of your COM
mittee to deliver this address, [ should
feel Obliged to commence with an apollo
gy; for | certainly confess to feeling
which has dwelt upon my mind ever
since the invitation was communicated
to me and the suggestion made that it
would be agreeable to the soldiers of
Vermont that the subject of the address
should be, "Jobn Sedgwick." that l am
totally inadequate to do justire to the
memory of that gallant soldier or jus
tice to an audience such as this.
Disclaiming responsibility, however,
except as | have stated. shall proceed
at once without loss of time to say a
few words to you, fellow citizens. of a.
man who deserves to be kept in perpet-
ual memory by the people whom he
served, and by men of every land who
admire honest and sterling manhood,
and pure and devoted patriotism.
Those who were in the army or who
remember the trying days from '61 to
'65 must often realize that there is to-
day in the United States and out of it
generation who. being children or un-
born when the civil was commenced,
know very little of its history.
Those who bore part in it scarcely
realize yet, that this great American
conflict for the maintenance and restora-
tion of the Union will stand in human.
history as one of the most important
events that has ever been chronicled by
the pen of man. The younger genera
tion to whom have referred learned
history before this chapter was written
in its pages. Although recorded in the
blood of a million of their fellow crea-
lures, upon trampled battlefelds in
many States, although written in words
that will never fade on the hearts of
many widowed women, on the hearts of
thousands of orphan children, the his
tory of the school room of the younger
| generation of to-day contains nothing
of the civil war. 1t was not the prac-
tice before the war, nor do l believe it
is now, that young people who leave the
school room ever devote themselves with
any remarkable diligence to continuing
their studies either of history or Of any
other branch included in the regular
course. 1t is not to be wondered at,
therefore, that there are many heroes
who gave their lives for this Republic,
whose names are comparatively little
known Neither is it to be gainsaid
that as time advances the names of these
men will beam in the armament of
American glory with the steady lustre
of the everlasting and Interchangeable
stars. The lesson of their lives will be
taught to the children of the future as a
necessary portion of their education !;
the story of their deeds will be told to
the old and the young. And peu and
pencil will portray in all tho forms by
which ideas are communicated and made
imperishable. some central truths that
they lived and died to establish. Of
these truths. one may be stated here.
That the people of our day and genera
tion are not unworthy the Inheritance
bequeathed them by the founders of
this government that the people of our
day have not degenerated, that at no
time throughout all the past annals of
the world has any nation or. people or
race produced grander types of humani-
ty than this American Republic. Of
the men of '6l to '65 it may be said
that they differed in character and ac-
hlevement as we'll as in personal demean-
or "as one star differeth from another
star in glory"
There were the grave veterans of
former wars, there were the bright fac
ed boys of the school room who left
their mothers sides to march in serried
ranks to battle fields of the terrors of
which they never could have had the
remotest conception. There were the
farmer and the blacksmith. the lawyer
and the mechanic, the preacher and the
laborer, the doctor and the clerk, men
of all walks in life, men Of all grades in
social circles, men of all habits of mind,
! of all grades of talent, men with and
without ambition, who marched with
steady steps to make up the millions
who faced the privations of the field to
establish a principle which it had here
/ tofore seemed to them it was sacrilege
to question. This principle was that
this Republic is an indestructible Union
of indestructible States. The names of
many of those who composed our armies
have become historic and household
words. The memory of all, even of the
humblest whose record occupies no
greater space in the worlds history than
the breadth of small granite slab.
wide enough to hold above the waving
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