The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1903-09-17

fortune to serve as lad with credit
and honor in one of the five regiments
which your state sent to the battle.
Four of those regiments, by the way,
that gallant soldier, Henry w. SlocunI,
whom we of New York can claim as our
own. The other regiment, that in which
Governor Murphy served, although
practically an entirely new regiment,
did work as good as that of any veteran
organization upon the field, and suffered
a proportional loss. This regiment was
at one time ordered to the support or Il
York soldier, the gallant General
Greene, whose son himself served as
major general in the war with Spain,
and who is now, as police commissioner
of New York, rendering as signal SER
vice in civil life as he had already rem
dered in military life.
If the issue of Antietam had been
other than it was, it is probable that
at least two great European powers
would have recognized the independence
of the confederacy; so that you who
fought here forty-one years ago have
the profound satisfaction of feeling that
you played well your part in one of
those crises big with the fate of all
mankind. You men of the Grand Army
by your victory not only rendered all
Americans your debtors forevermore.
but you rendered all humanity your
debtors. If the Union had been dis
solved, if the great edifice built with
blood and sweat and tears by mighty
Washington and his compeers had gone
down in wreck and ruin, the result
would have been an incalculable ca
lanity, not only for our people-and
most of all for those who in such event
would have seemingly triumphed-but
for all mankind. The great American
Republic would have become a memory
of derision: and the failure of the ex-
pertinent of self government by a great
people on great scale would have de-
lighted the heart of every foe of Re
publican institutions. Our country
now so great and go wonderful, would
have been split into little jangling
rival nationalities. each with a history
both bloody and contemplate. 1t was
because you. the men who wear the
button of the Grand Army, triumphed
in those dark years that every Ameri
can now holds his head high. proud in
the knowledge that he belongs to a ra-
ton whose glorious past and great
present will be succeeded by an even
mightier future: whereas had you fail
ed we would all of us. north and south.
east and west, be now treated by other
nations at the best with eontemptuous
tolerance; at the worst with overbear-
ing insolence.
Moreover. every friend of liberty ev-
cry believer in government, every
idealist who wished to see his ideals take
practical shape, wherever he might be
I IN the WOTiu. knew lIdL Jne SUCCESS Oh
all in which he most believed was
bound up with the success of the Union
armies in this great struggle. I con-
fdently predict that when the final
! judgment of history is recorded it will
be said that in no other war of which
we have written record was it more vi
tally essential for the welfare of man
kind that victory should rest evhere it
finally rested. There have been other
wars for individual freedom. There have
all a4w.r.c
But there has never been another war in
which the issues at stake were so large,
looked at from either standpoint. We
take just pride in the great deeds of the
men of 1776, but we must keen in mind
that the Revolutionary war would have
been sl1orn of well-nigh all its results
had the side of union and liberty been
defeated in the civil war. In such case
! we should merely have added another
to the lamentably long list of cases in
which peoples have shown that after
winning their liberty they are wholly