The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1885-04-09
THE LESSON OF TWENTY YEARS AGO.


the past, bears the legend: Twenty years
to Appomattox." Sunday, the 9th of April,
twenty years ago to-day, the chieftain of the
confederate armies gave over the fight,
general U. s. Grant, and the war was sub
stantially at an end. What followed was
merely the acceptance of the inevitable, and
the great armies that for four years had been
in the field of military operations went back
to the pleasant ways of peace. Appomattox
crowned a perfect work, so far as General
Grant was concerned. and gave him an abid-
ing place among the worlds few great soldiers.
Dying or dead, the people of this continent
turn to again contemplate his great services.
Luck, fortune, providence-what you will
opened the way for this man to reveal his
character. The way once opened, his progress
was practically unimpeded from Donelson to
the day Lee quilted the field and gave over
the struggle.
What Waterloo was to England and Europe
in general, Appomattox was to this country.
The triumph Of Grant was even greater than
that of Wellington, in that it gives promise
of a longer era of peace and goodwill The
twenty years that lie between to-day and that
memorable April Sunday on that quiet Vir-
ginia stage road ought to be multiplied in
definitely before this people forget it's lesson.
The South did not suffer alone, but North
and South together were most fearfully
chastened. That the crime has been con-
doned does not pluck out all the sting. The
integity of the Nation has been maintained,
but there are hundreds of thousands of lives
that cannot be restored. For twenty years
ten thousand iresides have been bereft of
loved ones, and a great burden of debt for
strangling enterprise and impeding prosperity.
Twenty years ago to-day the young voter
was babe, and the man of thirty was but a
lad of ten when the Army of Virginia surren-
dered to the man now dying in New York A
majority of the present voting population of
the United States have come to manhood's es-
tate since the Rebellion. To them the story
of the war is at best tradition. They have no
adequate personal recollection of its awful i'm
port, its desperate issues, its fearful tragedies.
The line then sharply drawn between the two
great parties-the one loyal in every impulse,
the other traitorous and treacherous-has
grown DINNER, until now the latter arrogates
to itself virtues that it once scorned at fearful
cost of life and treasure.
There was lesson in the war that only the
thoughtful of the young men of to-day can
understand. The honeyed words of men who
once hated the country and the country's flag
have deceived many. Men there are, here in
Indiana, high in office, and in the councils of
the Democratic party, who, during the war,
offered every aid and encouragement to those
who were arrayed against the Union soldiers
sent to the field. But for them the war would
never have been undertaken, and but for their
encouragement it could not have been pro-
tracted, as it was, over four direful years. It
were well, on an occasion like this, to look
back and contemplate the Nations achieve
ments and the Nations deliverance, and then
to take reckoning and discover where we
are. We cannot, as people, afford to wholly
forget our country's history, nor to ignore the
worth of those whose great services redeemed
us out of civil war; and restored the land to
its wonted tranquility. Give credit to whom
credit is DUE To Democracy be allowed
all the glory of the Charleston ordinance of
secession, of the Montgomery Congress, of the
firing on Fort Sumter of Bull Run, Fort
Pillow, Belle Isle and Anderscnville. Be
theirs the credit of every confederate victory,
and theirs the debt of So, 600, 600, 900 put upon
the people. To the Republican party, as the
friend of Union, be ascribed Forts Henry and
Donelson, Shiloh and Vicksburg, Chattanooga,
Mission Ridge and Chickamauga, New
Orleans and Gettysburg, the Wilderness,
Petersburg and Richmond and Appomattox.
To it be given whatever credit may attach to
the Emancipation Proclamation, to restored
Union and to thousand millions Of debt
paid within twenty years after the war closed.
The anniversary of Appomattox must recall
these things to every citizen, to him who was
wrong and to him who is glad to-day that he
was right. If the people profit not by the