The daily Gate City. [volume] (Keokuk, Iowa) 1855-1916, 1908-11-25

have been possible, and blessed indeed
are we that in our beloved land it is
not only possible, but seems so en-
tirely natural as to excite no comment
whatever.
There is another point in General
S1eridan's career which it is good for
all of us to remember. Whereas
Grant, Sherman and Thomas were of
the old native American stock. The
parents of Sheridan, like the parents
OF F'arragut, were born on the other
side of the water. Amy one of the five
was just as much type of the real
American, of what is best in America,
as the other four. We should keep
steadily before our minds the fact that
Americanism is question of prin-
ciple. of purpose, of idealism, of char
acter; that it is not matter of birth
plae, or creed, or line Of descent. Here
in this country the representatives of
many old world races are being fused
together into new type, type the
main features of which are already te-
terfnined and were determined at the
time of the Revolutionary war; for
the crucible in which all the new types
are melted into one was shaped from
1875 to 1889 and our nationality was
definitely fixed in all its essentials
by tae men of Washington's day The
strains will not continue to exist sepa-
rately in this country as in the old
world. They will be combined, in
one; and of this new type those men
will best represent what is Hottest IN
the nations past, what is finest IN
her hope for the future, who stand
each solely on his worth as man who
scorn to do evil to others, and WHO re-
fuse to submit to wrongeoing them
selves; who have in them no faint of
weakness; who never fear to fight
when fighting is demanded by sound
and high morality, but who hope by
their lives to bring ever nearer the
day when justice and peace shall pre-
vail with our own borders and in our
relations with all foreign powers.
Much of the usefulness of any ca
reer must lie in the impress that it
makes upon, and the lessons That 1t
/ teaches to, the generations that come
later. We of this generation have our
own problems to solve, and the con-
/ dition of our solving them is that we
shall all work together as American cit
/ liens without regard to differences OF
! section or creed or birthplace, copying
not the divisions which so lamentably
sundered our fathers one from an
other. but the spirit of burning devo-
ton to duty which drove them for
ward each to do the right as 1t was
given him to see the right in the great
wears when Grant, Farragut, Sherman,
Thomas and Sheridan, when Lee and
/ Jackson and the Johnstons, the val
/ iant men of the north and the valient
mon of the south. fought to finish
the great Civil war. They did not
themselves realize, in the bitterness
of struggle. that the blood and the
grim suffering marked the deatn
throes of what was worn out, and the
birth pangs of a new and more glor'
ious national life Mighty is the her-
itaee which we have received from the
men of the mighty days we, IN our
turn. must grid up our loins to meet
the new issues with the same stern
courage and resolute adherence to an
ideal which marked our fathers VINO
] belonged to the generation OF the man
in whose honor we commemorate TINS
monument today