Waterbury evening Democrat., 1908-11-25
,fh. prs.ldsnt,s Addrsss.

NVViA 0o uNhV<o H~AVAS NAsW " V" VI ~>s people, should be fttingly comniem- orated here at the national capital, and I am glad indeA to take part in the unyeiling of this statue to General Sheridan. His name will always stand high on the list of American worthies. Not only was he great general, but he showed his greatness with that touch of originality which we call genius. Indeed, this quality of brill liance has been in one sense a disad- vantage to his reputation, for 1t has tended to overshadow his solid ability. We tend to think of him only n tho dashing cavalry leader, whereas b, was in reality not only that, but also great commander Of course the fact In his career most readily recognized was his mastery fin the necessarily modern art of handling masses cs modern cavalry so as to give them tue fullest possible effect not only in the ordinary operations of cavalry which precede and follow battle, but in the battle itself. But in addition he show ed in the civil war that he was first class army commander both as sub ordinate of Grant and when in mde- ! pendent command. His record in the Valley campaign and again from Five Forks to Appomattox Is one difficult to parallel in military history. After the close of the great war, in Q field where there was scant glory to be won by the general in chief, he rendered signal service which has gone almost unno- i ticed, for in the tedious, weary Indian wars on the great plains 1t was he whc | 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 Eulosizsd.
 His career was typically American for from plain beginnings he rose tc i the highest military position in our land. We honor hls memory itself and, moreover, as in the case of the l other great commanders of his day, his career symbolizes 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 jeans are taunted with having only a 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 a lofty ideal over merely material well being among the people of great na' tlon, 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 i, stands alone among wars in this, that now that the wounds are healed, thu memory of the mighty deeds of valo1 performed on one side no less than or 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 i' shown by what is occurring here to day. We meet together to raise { monument tosa great Union genera in the presence of many of the sur vivors of the Union army, and the sec retary of war, the man at the head O the army, who, by virtue of his of flee, occupies special relation to tn celebration, Is himself a man wh fought in the Confederate service Few indeed have been the countrie where such conjunction would hay
 been possible. and blessed indeed ar
 we that In our own beloved land 1t 1 not only possible, but seems so entire ly natural as to excite no common
 whatever.
 Amerieanism Defined.
 There is another point in Genera
 Sheridan's career which 1t is good flo all of us to remember Wlerea
 Grant, Sherman and Thomas were o
 the old native American stock, tn
 parents of Sheridan, like the parent
 of Farragut, were born on the othe
 side of the water. Any one of the fiv
 was just as much type of the req
 American, of what is best in America
 as the other four. We should kee
 steadily before our minds the fac
 that Americanism is question c
 principle. of purpose, of idealism, c
 character; that it is not matter C
 birthplace or creed or line of descen
 Here in this country the represent;
 tives of many old world races ar
 being fused together into new typ
 type the main features of which ar
 already determined and were dete
 mined at the time of the Revolutionar
 war, for the crucible in which all th
 new types are melted into one wa
 shaped from 17T6 to 17s9, and our n'
 tionality was definitely fixed in all il
 essentials by the men of Washington
 day. The strains will not continue
 exist separately in this country as
 the old world. They will be combine