The Vermont watchman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1883-1911, 1895-09-25
The Grand Army
AT LOUISVILLE!
TEIE Al Ei
Henry WatterSOn's Speech MGltS the
Great COncOQrsG to Tears!
kentucky's Overlooking
Hospitality!
A MAMMOTH BARBECUE

kentucky's metropolis welcomed the
Union veterans of the great Civil War
with patriotic fervor and enthusiasm
that has not been surpassed-if, in
deed, it has been equaled in any
Northern city that has opened its gates
to the survivors of the Grand Army
that saved this nation from dismem-
berment.
THE PARADE.
1t was magnificent demonstration.
Through Louisvile's wide streets
marched, as her guests, $4,000 of those
who once came to conquer. Their
pathway was banked by over third of
a million people, who gave the Boys in
Blue reception that will never be for
gotten by the veterans from abroad.
Men of Southern birth and sentiment
We'd with their brethren from the
North in their demonstrations of greet
ing, and white-haired women who,
thirty.odd years ago, heard of the APP
proach of the Bluecosts with fear and
apprehension, petted and pelted them
with flowers. 1t was gigantic and
sincere tribute to the sentiment that
was at the head of the procession and
which was worn on badges innumer-
able: cone Flag, One Country"
The opening of the encampment
proper was preceded by a campfire at
Music Hall, which was filled with
brilliant audience. Henry Watterson
spoke words of welcome for the cit
liens committee and ex-Lieutenant-
Governor Jacobs for the Kentucky De-
partment of the Grand Army. Sub
joined is
MIR. wATTERsON's ADDRESS
That promissory note, drawn by the
CITY of Louisville, Endorsed by me and
discounted by you in the city of Pitts
burg year ago-it has matured-and
am come 10 pay it! You, who were
so prompt and so generous about it,
will not be displeased to learn that it
puts us to no inconvenience to pay it,
On the contrary, it having been one
of those obligations on which the inter-
est, compounding day by day, was de-
signed to eat up the principal, its dis
charge leaves US poor only in the re-
greet that we may not repeat the trans
action every twelve months and con-
vert this central point of the universe
into a permanent encampment for the
Grand Army of the Republic.
Except that historic distinctions have
long been oblterated here, it might be
mentioned that l appear before you as
the representative alike of those who
wore the blue and of those who wore
the gray in that great national combat
which, whatever else it did or did not,
left no shadow upon American soldier
ship, no stain upon American man.
hood.
But in Kentucky the war ended
thirty years ago. Familiar intercom-
munication between those who fought
in it upon opposing sides; marriage and
giving in marriage; the rearing of q
common progeny; the ministrations OF
private friendship; the all.subduing in.
fluence of home and church and school
of wife and child, have eliminated in
such closely knit web of interests and
affections that none of us care to Olsen
tangle the threads that compose it
And the flag! God bless the flag! Al
the heart of McCallum More warmed tt
the tartan, do all hearts warm to thu
flag! Have you, upon your round O.
sightseeing, missed it hereabouts'
Does it make itself on any hand con
spicuous by it's absence? Can 20,
doubt the loyal sincerity of those witt
from house-top and roof-tree hav
thrown it to the breezep Let som,
sacrilegious hand be raised to haul
down and seel No, no, comradesl tn
people en- masse do not deal in subter
fuges. They do not stoop to conquer
they may be wrong; they may be per
verse, but they never dissembe.
These are honest flags, with homes
hearts behind them. They are the sym
bols of a nationality as precious to u
as to you. They fly at last as Webste
would have had them fly, bearing n
such notices as "What is all thi
worth?" or "Liberty first and Unio
afterward," but blazing in letters @
living light upon their ample folds, a
they float over the sea and over tn
land, those words dear to every Amer
lean heart: "Union and Liberty, No
and Forever, One and Inseparable."
And why not2 What is left for yo
and me to cavl about-far LESS to fgl
about? When Hamilton and Madiso
agreed in supporting a constitutio
wholly acceptable to neither of then
they compromised some differences ar
they left other differences open
double construction; and, among thei
latter, was the exact relation OF tt
states to the general government I'll
institution of African slavery, with i
irreconciable conditions, got betwee
the North and the South, and
But am not here to recite the hi
tory Of the United States. You kno
what happened as well as | do. and v