Morning journal and courier., 1894-05-31
oRATIoN BY JUDGE BALDWIN.

ORATION BY JUDGE BALDWIN. Delivered Yesterday Afternoon at the Unveiling of the Tablets on the Soldiers, Monument.
 Tho following oration was then de- livered by Judge Simeon E. Baldwin at the patriotic exercises on East Rock park, at the soldiers monument:
 For seven long years this lofty column has stood, . nameless monument. Its inscrip- i tions have told of wars, not men. Of | wars, of which the first gave birth to the | new nation; another proved that England was no longer the undisputed mistress of the seas; in another, we repeated, after 300 yeara, the conquest of Cortes, but with . better cause; and in the last, the nation, by the heat of battle, by the shock of contending armies, was at last welded to- gether so as to be indeed stan insoluble union of indestructible states."
 Around these four wars centers the his tory of our country, and we, sons of Con- nectiout, are proud to remember what part she took in them. Ip the war of the Revolution, ConnecH. cut sent more troops into the Continental army than any other of the thirteen states, except Massachusetts,; and Massachusetts, then, as now, had double her population. In the civil war Connecticut sent more troops into the field, in proportion to the number of her inhabitants, than Massa- chusetts; and more than any other stats, ,ex cept two of her own children, Iowa and Illinois. There was a time in the dark days of the struggle, when 8 tenth of our entire population were fighting in the army of the Union. What man of middle age ia here who does not recall the strange thrill of tense excitement that swoke the north, when the first shot was fired at Sumter; the hurried call of Lincoln; the quick response of Buckingham; the drills and recruiting ries turned into ba1raeks; the camp at Oyster Point; the transports at Long wharf; the march of one Connecticut regiment after another to the front; the hourly reports and rumors, now of victory, and now of disaster; the new color which life took on; the nobler passions that spoke | out; the higher ideals men put before | themselves. And there are many of ue here who remember, all too well, those long processions moving through our ! streets, month after month, in the early | | the body of some fallen hero to the ever | open door of the city of the dead. So 1t was when the young life of Theo | dore Winthrop, the ripe years of Admiral ! Foote, came to their close; and so was many another name upon these tablets honored, as 1t passed into history. For history claims as her own, each of our soldier dead.
 They belonged to the war. and m ade 8 part of it, ia closer sense than you who survived 1t. There Is no surer road to fame, for human greatness, than what seems an untimely death. Socrates drink ing the fatal cup, Ce sar falling in the sen ate house, Warren at Bunker hills Hamil- ton on the fields of Hoboken, Lawrence crying 'Don't Give Up the Ship" Lincoln tuck down in the first days of returning peace. Who. thinks Of these without thinking also of how they died! What, in reverence be 1t said, but tragic end was noble enough for the life of our Lord him selfi
 l Finis coronst opus. These lives, which we are here to honor, ended that the wa, might end, and end in victory.
 As recall these memories of the war, | speak not to the young and ardent spirits who then sprang to arms with that fresh | ness of enthusiasm that belongs only tc the opening years of life. I speak te gray-haired men. You are the game, and not the same, who marched to save youl country at Lineoln's call. You have be come part of another generation. Yor stand on the brink of another century whose spirit already claims you for its | own.
 The lives that belong most truly to th era of the war, that tell us most of what i | was and what it did, are those, as I hay, | said, whose simple story is recorded ol l, these tablets, by which we stand.
 Of the dearest friends of my boyhood 5 I read there the names of two, who fell ol the came day at Cedar Mountain. Who i
 there here who has Tot lost friend who's 7 death this monument will henceforth com
 memoratea
 Time Ia no measure of human life y Even on earth the shortest in years mau,
 be the longest in achievement, and the old
 est among us may have learned the leas
 and done the least. And as we look o1 from some eminence liks this on the eter
 nal ses-an eternal sea of ever changin
 waters-or up to the blue vault where ligh = conceels and darkness shows that we ar
 ono or a million worlds, who can call tn
 longest human life more than the psssin | of dream.
 But the work of mans hand lives afte him. He who has finished the work tha
 was given him to do, passes away; but h
 hss left his impress forever on the world
 behind him.
 There are upon theee tablets the name
 of those who held great offices; but tn
 country owes to admirsls and generals n' l more than to the private soldier or ordi
 nary seaman who did his duty in the place
 where God set him. If we repeat nor
 often such names as Foote and Gregory a Osborn and Merwin, it is because the com | ofa la f0r md o,6 Dhoy
 we speak of him we think as we'll of thos'
 who folio .ed where he led the way.
 Together, and with equal honor, are thu
 names of all New Haven's hero dead re corded here.
 This monument stands by no grave
 Among the names it bears are those O.
 some whose dust lies mingled with the soi ! of distant battlefelds and of others who sleep with thsir fathers in the quiet ceme ! teries of their native town. But we hav' felt there was no spot on our New Have1 : plain, however consecrated by fond sssocl ations and loving memories, where VI could be content to rear this monument It must be set on high. It must bs loft, as was their spirit of patriotic devotion its capstone crowned with sunshine at thu earliest dawn, while the city below Is stil in the shadow of the night. It must b. founded on the eternal hills, stretching ul to the eternal heaven.
 It was the first thought of New Haven t<
 build not monument like this, but me morial fountain on the green. But beau
 tiful ss is that elm-walled square, dear tt
 us all as the center of our civic life, wha
 is it to place like thiss AS the ideal O
 life rises above it's common course; as thu
 heights of great achievement tower sbov,
 the trival round of our daily occupations
 SO does this rock rise up, parting the riv CTS of the plain, to offer its everlasting : foundations on which to rear this memo
 rial of the dead.
 Such monument on such @ spot etand
 apart from time.
 am speaking in the presence of three
 generations of our race; but @ century
 from now, if one who is here to-day sur
 wives, it will only be because he has out | lived himself.
 We pass away. There is something bet
 ter for men to do than they can do or earth. But the great events of every az,