Ottumwa semi-weekly courier. [volume] (Ottumwa, Iowa) 1899-1903, 1903-06-09
EULOGIzES DEAD.
Rev. S. j. Geddes Addresses Mem
bers Of futile Post q. A. r.
FITTING MEMORIAL ADDRESS
South ottumwa Veterans Honor Mem
Dry of Deceased Comrades With
Exercises at Odd Fellows Hail.
Eloquent Grafton Delivered.

From daily of May soth.
With hearts saddened by the
thoughts Of their departed comrades
who are sleeping their last long sleep
beneath the sodded mounds, the mem
bers of the j. M. Tuttle post, G. A. R.,
and the Woman's Relief Corps held a
memorial service at the Odd Fellows
hall In South Ottumwa this morning.
The memorial address was delivered
by Rev. S. ]. Geddes, president of the
Iowa conference of the Methodist Pro-
testant church, and the speaker told
in glowing words of the self-sacrificing
deeds of the heroic dead.
Decorate Graves.
Before the service delegations from
the post decorated the graves of their
deceased comrades with wreaths of
flowers. The graves at the McIntire
cemetery were decorated by Henry Ad-
cock and A. Culbertson, while George
Weir and D. w. Williams strewed
flowers on the resting places of the
soldier dead in the Shaul cemetery.
The Memorial Service.
The memorial service was deeply
|
out was a fitting one for the occasion.
The meeting was opened by prayer by
Rev. S. 1. Elder, pastor of the Second
service was then carried out by the
members of the post, followed by the
Grafton by Rev. Geddes.
Rev. Geddes' Grafton.
Rev. Geddes told eloquently Of the
deceased veterans, who passed through
all the sufferings and hardship of the
great civil struggle. He spoke as fol-
lows:
! Members of J. M. futile Post of the
Grand Army of, the Republic and la
dies of the Woman's Relief Corps:
When the stars look down from the
sky tonight they shall see the flowers
that affection places this day on the
grave of every deceased soldier
throughout our beloved land. Thus
after we have all passed away from
earth, If succeeding generations shall
grow careless of our deeds, the very
| heavens shall bear us witness that We
were not wanting in tenderest devo
| ton to the memory of those who fought
our battles and won for us and pre-
served to us an united country to live
In and to love.
In the hands of tottering fathers and
| mothers, and in the hands of children
being trained never to forget, are flow.
ers for all soldiers graves today,
graves Of soldiers of the Revolution
airy war, of the War of 1912, of the
Mexican war, Of the Civil war, Of the
Spanish-American war, and of those
who followed the stars and stripes to
| Pekin--not one grave will be neglected
| today.
| All our heroes in military service
are equally loved; but Decoration day
was born of our great Civil war, the
| most sanguinary arbitrament of arms
of modern time, and 1t is reasonable
and only natural, that our thought
| should revert in special manner today
to that mighty struggle and to those
who fought it to finish. In scarcely
| more than the first hundred years of
our history as nation, our country
was six times called to arms-five
times against old world peoples. Only
once has an American army surren-
| dered and then 1t took an American
army to make them do 1t.
/ would not be honoring the men
who marched under Grant and Sher-
man and the others if should try to
minimize to you the valor of the men
| who marched with Lee and Johnson
and the others. The bravest and most
capable soldiers on earth were the
southern soldiers-except the north
ern soldiers
Today we are one, and the band of
union is strengthening with every
passing year.
| That ex-confederates should be al
lowed to hold annual reunions and
decorate with flowers, each April
month, the graves of their fallen
comrades in arms, was and is some
thing unique, and some OF us who
were not down there forty years ago,
worried ourselves for several years
over such doings. We fancied that the
lost cause was going to thereby be
nursed back to life. Anyway it was
against our principles to permit people
whom we had whipped to hold up their
heads in that way.
But President General Grant did not
object, and the G.. A. R. seemed quite
undfsturbed, and SO the rest of us fl
nally decided, as we had done once
before, to let those southerners alone
We all now know that to have denied
them the privileges of occasional re-
unions and decorating the graves of
their cherished dead, would have been
unwise The Union was not preserved
when Lee surrendered, but when the
gaping wound caused by terrific Civil
war was healed. For both the surren.
der and the quick healing of the
wounds far larger measure of praise
than has yet been given is richly due
to the men of the Grand Army of the
Republic. do believe that if noncom.
batants On both sides could have had
their way at the close of the war, that
awful wound would be open and bleed,
ing still, and we should this day be
one people only in name, Let no one
fancy that l think the wound to be
healed wrung southern hearts
alone for it wrung northern
hearts as we'll More than 1000 of the
flower of our northland fell in battle,
more than half as many more died of
their wounds while war was still 60
ing on and nearly 100000 were cut
down by disease-reason enough all
this for mourning and bitterness in
every northern home. But your mag
nanimity, victors of the Civil war, to-
4 o,,Iu H<~o 1n