Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1886-05-31

stern weather, the stunted groWths and the
auroral lights of his island home in the
heart of frozen sea.
There IS beautiful and benefcent pur-
pose IN this God-given instinct. 1t binds
men In rong and sweet letters of love and
memory TO their native land 1t shows
that although God hath made of one blood
all the nations, mankind was not intended
to be massed into one vast nation with geo
graphical lines obliterated. "God has
placed the solitary in families. and has
appointed those families the bounds of
their habitation." God, the great sur
yeyor, has Staked off the earth 10 the sew
eral races, intending that there shall be
diverse nationalities, each possessing its
own heritage OF language, customs and
history, as well as of soil and sea and sky.
But now let me remind you that this
beautiful feeling of attachment to home
and native land, which has so often
BEEN THE INSPIRATION OF SONG,
Poetry and eloquence, is not patriotism
IL the fullest sense of that word. | know
that feeling has been mistaken for patriot
ism, but no mistake could be greater.
The love of that location we call home
is an instinct shared alike by the Piute
Digger or Modoc Indian clinging to his
hunting grounds or lava beds, and by the
300 dying in the pass of Thermopyla The
instinct is as strong in a Laplander as in
any hero OF our late war. Nay, this attach
ment to home is stronger in the halfciyi-
lied japanese or Chinaman or Malay than
in European or American A savage
will die of homesickness if you take him
away from his own tribe and land
The patriotism that fired the soul of a
Hampden, Garabaldi, or a Koscuisko. an
Emmett or Washington, a-Lincoln or a
Grant, what was it? Was it no higher
than the blind instinct that clings to a tree
or burrows in a rock? Was it for the love
of Boston or of Massachusetts that Warren
died on Bunker Hill? Did Washington
draw his sword for the blue ridges or to-
tobacco fields of Virginia, or for his pater-
nal estates at Mount Vernon? Did Marion
and Sumter fight for the plantations
and palmetto groves of Carolina
No their inspiration was some
thing deeper, nobler, more intellectual
than the brute courage that merely stands
sentinel over bleak hill, or beautiful
valley. or a State, because it happened to be
ones birthplace. The men who went with
their several States into rebellion were not
patriots at all, for true patriotism is not de-
votion to a locality, but to an idea, to a
form of government and the institutions it
shelters. And so it comes to pass that
patriotism can catch and burn in the bosom
of a man of foreign birth.
Think you that Baron De Kalb, fighting
and dying for colonial liberty on the plains
of Camden, by the side of Washington, or
the Marquis de Lafayette, rendering his
sword, fortune and honor to Congress in
the darkest hour of our nations birth
throes, did not feel an enthusiasm for our
cause as pure and patriotic as that which
animated the soul of a Hancock or an
Adams? And during our late war thou
sands of men of foreign birth freely left
their adopted homes and volunteered in
our armies, and were the peers of
our native-born soldiers in hero
ism and loyalty. English, Scotch, Irish,
and German blood freely mingled on a
hundred battlefelds men from the Tweed,
the Thames, the Shannon and the Rhine,
marched in our armies, stood their ground
in the fiery front of battle, and shouted in
broken English
THE wATcHwoRDs OF THE UNION,
AS they charged upon the foe, and | think
that fact ought to wipe out of this country
the last trace of Know Nothingism. y
For my part, | think the pilgrims of the
nineteenth century who land at Castle Car
den, have as good a right to come if they
behave themselves, as had those of the
seventeenth, who landed at Plymouth
Rock. Getting here first gives us no exclu-
sive right to this new world any more than
it did the Indian, who was here before US.
The distinctive feature of true patriotism
is that it is devotion TO the idea which
ones native country represents.
American patriotism is warm devotion
to a republican form of government, and
TO that idea of the largest liberty for the
individual embodied in the Declaration Of
Independence, and in our organic law-an
idea which has crystallized in our Union
of States, and our representative form of
government. Our fathers, said Mr.. Lin
coin. in his address at Gettysburg brought
forth upon this continent new nation.
conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the
proposition that all men are created equal.
and the war for the Union is a test of the
| question whether this nation, or any ma
| ton so conceived and so dedicated, can en-
dure." Our system of government is not
| perfect by any means, but it aims to en-
| body, and IN a greater measure than any
other does embody, the highest political
| ideal of any age, and is the consummate
| flower and fruitage of modern civilization.
| 1t represents the result of all past expert
| ments in government, of all past researches
| IN social science and American patriotism
| is devotion to manhood government, and
| to the correlative idea of the indissoluble
union OF the States into great nation.
| Washington and his compeers were not
| lighting for the thirteen colonies, but for
the race. They were the champions of the
! rights of man.
Ours was not the first experiment of a
! republican form of, government but all
| previous ones ended in disastrous failure
| Ours is the first that ever lived 100 years
without beginning to decay The rage OF
popular faction dashed the republics OF
| Greece and Rome to atoms, and our enc
mics abroad predicted a like result for our
| experiment. When our war cloud gath
cred, and it looked in the stress of the
storm as though on noble ship would
| break in two amidships, all Europe looked
| gloatingly on like so many wreckers to see
| it go down. But the war ended. Our two
million soldiers, lately arrayed against each
other, laid down their arms and quietly
went back to the arts of peace. Our great
national wounds healed by the first inten-
| ton, leaving scarcely scar, while our
COUNTRY Is GROWING RICH AND PROSPER
Gus
At a rate unprecedented in history. Surely
God hath done great things for US. He
! hath not dealt so with any nation. Stand
ing beside our dead on Memorial Day, we
should reverently thank God that through
| all this land the shadow of our flag falls on
neither foe nor slave OF what do these
graves remind us? What is the lesson thew
teach US? Twenty-six years ago this was
the most unwarlike nation on earth. For
| nearly fifty years no spot in any of these
States had been the scene of a battle.
Thirty millions of people had an army OF
less than 10000 men. The faith of our
people in the stability and permanency of
this Government was like their faith in the
eternal course of nature. But shot in
Charleston harbor startled the nation from
its long dream of peace. The flag of Sum-
ter went down with sorrow and in shame.
An indignant people sprang to arms, and
the most peaceful nation in the world
became in an hour the most warlike.
1t was not a people with an army
it was people in arms.
The nation was summoned to arms by
every high motive that can inspire men
A century of freedom had made its people
unfit for despotism. They must save their
Government or miserably perish. As a flash
of lightning in midnight tempest reveals
the abyssmal horrors of the sea, so did the
flash of the first gun reveal the awful abyss
into which rebellion was ready TO plunge
US, and in moment the fire was lighted in
twenty million hearts. What was it that
led a million men to condense life into an
hour and to crown that by joyfully well
coming death to gather up the cherished
purposes of life, its aims its ambitions its