The Mankato free press. [volume] (Mankato, Blue Earth County, Minn.) 1879-1924, 1908-11-27

parallel in military history. After the
close of the great war, in field where
there was scant glory to be won by the
general in chief, he rendered signal
service which has gone almost unno-
ticed, for in the tedious, weary Indian
wars on the great plains it was he who
developed in thoroughgoing fashion
the system of campaigning in winter
which, at the cost Of bitter hardship
and peril, finally broke down the band
ed strength Of those formidable war
riors, the horse Indians.
Generals Career Eulosized.
His career was typically American.
for from plain beginnings he rose to
the highest military position in our
land. We honor his memory itself,
and, moreover, as in the case of the
other great commanders Of his day,
his career sy1nbolizes the careers Of
all those men who in the years of the
nations direst need sprang to the
front to risk everything, including life
itself, and to spend the days Of their
strongest young manhood in valorous
conflict for an ideal. Often we Amer
leans are tainted with having only
material ideal. The empty folly Of the
taunt is sufficiently shown by the
presence here today of you men Of the
Grand Army, you the comrades Of the
dead general, the men who served
with and under him. In all history
we have no greater instance of subor-
dination Of self, Of the exalting of
lofty ideal over merely material well
being among the people of great ma
ton, than was shown by our own peo-
pie in the civil war.
And you, the men who wore the
blue, would be the first to say that
this same lofty Indifference to the
things Of the body, when compared to
the things Of the soul, was shown by
your brothers who wore the gray.
Dreadful was the suffering, dreadful
the loss, of the civil war. Yet it
stands alone among wars in this, that,
now that the wounds are healed, the
memory of the mighty deeds of valor
performed on one side no less than on
the other has become the common
heritage of all our people in every
quarter Of this country, The COM
pleteness with which this is true is
shown by what Is occurring here to-
day. We meet together to raise a
monument to a great Union general
In the presence Of many of the sur
vivors of the Union army, and the Sec
rotary Of war, the man at the head Of
the army, who, by virtue Of his Of
fee, occupies a special relation to the
celebration, is himself a man who
fought in the Confederate service.
Few indeed have been the countries
where such conjunction would have
been possible, and blessed indeed are
we that in our own beloved land it is
not only possible, but seems so entire
ly natural as to excite no comment
whatever.
Americanism Defined.
There is another point in General
Sheridan'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 Farragut, were born on the other
side Of the water. Any 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
principle, Of purpose, of idealism, Of
character; that 1t is not a matter of
birthplace or creed or line of descent.
Here in this country the representa-
tives Of many old world races are
being fused together into a new type,
type the main features of which are
already determined and were deter
mined at the time of the Revolutionary
war, for the crucible in which all the
new types are melted into one was
shaped from 1776 to 1889, and our ma
tionality was definitely fixed in all its
essentials by the men Of Washingtons
day. The strains. will not continue to
exist separately 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
refuse to submit to wrongdoing them
selves, who have in them no faint of
weakness, who never fear to fight
when fighting is demanded by a sound
and high morality, but who hope by
their lives to bring ever nearer the
day when justice and peace shall pre-
vail within our own borders and in
our relations with all foreign powers.
Much of the usefulness of any career
must lie in the impress that it makes
upon and the lessons that it teaches to
the generations that come after. We
of this generation have our own prob
lens to solve, and the condition Of our
solving them Is that we shall all work
together as American citizens without
regard to differences Of section or
creed or birthplace, copying not the di
visions which SO lamentably sundered
our fathers one from another, but the
spirit Of burning devotion to duty
which drove them forward, each, to do
the right as it was given him to see
the right. in the great years when