Alma record. (Alma, Mich.) 1878-1928, 1891-06-05

complainingly as those who rest in
trenches on battle fields or those per.
ished miscrably amidst the squalor of
Southern prisons. We have among
US to-day valorous knights, brave
warriors, as worthy of praise as those
who fell in the fierce charges of
Fredericksburg or the stubborn de-
Tense of Gettysburg. Let us accord
the living-our Grand Army breth-
ren-the honor they bravely won
and richly deserve. God in his
providence did not call upon them
to seal their loyalit y with their blood
and they abide among us, living at
testations of Gods protection of
our republic in its darkest hours.
We owe these survivors of the
war our admiration and our thanks.
This debt our people seem ready to
pay. But there is another debt
which our government owes these
veterans, TO whose efforts it owes
its existence. l refer to pensions.
This debt there are some among us
niggardly enough to begrudge the
soldiers. They would deal penuri-
ously with those men who offered
their lives in the hour of the nations
peril. They refuse to put a pre-
MUM on patriotism, They are un'
true to the cherished convictions of
patriots in al lands. Nothing is SO
vital to a nations stability as the
sentiment universally held, and lib.
orally evinced by pensions, that those
who fight for the nation in her time
Of need are well deserving at the
nations hands in her time of pros
perity, and when perhaps the older
may be failing in his power to help
himself. Surely this day with its
memories should incline us to liber
al dealing with the soldiers. Then
will our nation never lack for de.
Tenders in any emergency.
AT such a time as this, it may no,
be amiss 10 refresh our minds with
the causes which produced the civil
war, and to revive the memories of
those tremendous times which tried
mems souls.
To superficial observer it may
have seemed as though secession was
but the expression Of disappointed
political hopes, that it was a protest,
in fit of rage, of the South against
the election Of Mr.. Lincoln. SO ter.
rible CONFUSION proceeded from no
such slight cause. The election of
Mr.. Lincoln was but the occasion fol
the bursting of the storm which had
been long brewing. Forces had
been at work, visible only to far
seeing men, which made the confiic,
inevitable, irrepressible. Daniel
Webster had heard the low mutter
ings of the storm, and in a burst OF
his most impassioned oratory, he
prays to be delivered from the sight
of disunion and the shock of arms
Men, who like Webster, could read
the signs of the times, feared wha,
actually came, even while hoping
that it might be ayerted. Who can
read Washington's farewell ad
dress, and not catch the note OF
prophecy in his words as he pleads
with his countrymen to "cheris h a
cordial, habitual and immovable
attachment to their national union,
and to regard it as the palladium
of their political safety and pros
perity?" Who shall say that he had
not in mind the very evil which lat
er rent the nation, when he warned
Americans against everything which
tended to ALLEVIATE one section from
another. The student, who reads
the history of the first three quart.
ers of century of our national life,
cannot fail to see that slavery was
a bone of contention from the first.
Though the Declaration of Indepen.
dence and the Constitution avoid
any mention of slavery, it existed,
the root of untold misery to the ma
ton, and as it grew, this Upas tree
of evil cast the baleful shadow upon
n