The Republican journal. [volume] (Belfast, Me.) 1829-current, 1909-05-27
Memorial Day.
By Henry Watterson. Delivered at Louis.
vile, May 80, 1899.

vile, May 80, 1899.
The duty which draws US together and
the day, come to US laden by deeper
meaning than they have ever borne be-
fore, and the place which witnesses our
coming invests the occasion with increas-
ed solemnity and significance Within
the precincts of this dread but beautiful
city, two plots of ground, with but
hillock between, have been set aside to
mark the resting place off the dead of
two armies that in life We're called hostile
the army of the union, the army of the
confederacy. We come to decorate the
graves of those who died fighting for the
union. Presently others shall come to
decorate the graves of those who died
fighting for the confederacy.
Yet, if these flower-covered mounds
could open and the brave men who in
habit them could rise, not as disembodied
spirits, but in the sentient flesh and
blood which they wore when they went
hence, they would rejoice, as we do, that
the hopes of both have at last been full
filled, and that the confederacy, swallow
ed up by the union, lives again in Ameri-
can manhood and brotherhood, such as
were contemplated by the makers of the
republic.
/ To those of us who We're the comrades
and contemporaries of the dead that are
buried there, who survived the ordeal of
battle and who live to bless the day, there
is nothing either strange or unnatural in
this, because we have seen it coming for
long time; we have seen it coming in
the kinship of ties even as close as those
of common country; in the robust in
tercourse of the forum and the market
! olaPn n tho SanraG into of tho
domestic affections; but, above ALL in the
prattle of the children who cannot dis
tingush between the grandfather who
wore the blue and the grandfather who
wore the gray.
The issues that evoked the strife of
sections are dead issues The conflict
which was thought to be irreconcilable,
and was certainly inevitable, ended more
than thirty years ago. TIC some the re-
suit was logical-to others it was disap-
pointing-to all it was final. AS no man
disputes it, let no man deplore it. Let US
rather believe it was needful to make us
a nation. Let US rather look upon it as
into mirror, seeing. not the desolation
of the past, but the radiance of the
future; and in the heroes of the new
north and the new south who contested
in generous rivalry up the fre-swept
steep of Ell Caney, and side by side re-
emblazoned the national character in the
waters about Corregidor island and under
the walls of Cavite, let US behold host
ages for the old north and the old south
bent together in union that knows
neither point of the compass and has
flung its geography into the sea.
Great as were the issues we have put
them behind US forever, yet greater
c-fi1l vic
Who shall fathom them? Who shall for
cast them? l seek not to lift the veil on
what may lie beyond 1t is enough for
me to know that | have a country and
that my country leads the world.
| have stood in aWeStruck wonder and
fear lest the glorious fabric should fade
into darkness and prove but the unsub-
stantial pageant of vision; when To-!
out of the misty depths of the far-away
Pacific came the booming of Dewey's
guns, quickly followed by the answering
voice of the guns of Sampson and Shat
ter and Schley, and | said at is not a
dream. 1t is Gods promise redeemed.
With the night of sectional confusion
that is gone, civil strife has passed from
the scene, and in the light of the perfect
day that is come the nations finds, as the
first fruit of its new freedom, another
birth OF greatness and power and re-
noWn. ="
Fully realizing the responsibility Of
this, and the duties that belong to it, |,
for one, accept it, and all that it brings
with it and implies, thankful that l, too,
am an American. Wheresoever its star
may lead, | shall follow, nothing loath or
doubling, though it guide the nations
footsteps to the farthermost ends of the
earth. Believing that in the creation and
the preservation of the American union
the hand of the Almighty has appeared
from first to last; that His will begat it;
and that His word has prevailed that in
the war of the Revolution and in the
Civil War the incidents and accidents of
battle left no doubt where Providence in
clined; if the star that now shines over
us, at once signet of Gods plan and
purpose and heaven-sent courier of
civilization and religion, shall fix itself
above the steppes of Asia and the sands
of Africa, it shall but confirm me in my
faith that "the judgments of the Lord
are true and righteous altogether.