Part 7

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 for evermore, but you rendered all humanity your debtors. If the Union had been dissolved, 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 calamity, 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 experiment of self-government by a great people on a great scale would have delighted the heart of every foe of republican institutions. Our country, now so great and so wonderful, would have been split into little jangling rival nationalities, each with a history both bloody and contemptible. It was because you, the men who wear the button of the Grand Army, triumphed in those dark years, that every American now holds his head high, proud in the knowledge that he belongs to a Nation whose glorious past and great present will be succeeded by an even mightier future; whereas had you failed we would all of us, North and South, East and West, be now treated by other nations at the best with contemptuous tolerance; at the worst with overbearing insolence.

Moreover, every friend of liberty, every believer in self-government, every idealist who wished to see his ideals take practical shape, wherever he might be in the world, knew that the success of all in which he most believed was bound up with the success of the Union armies in this great struggle. I confidently 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 vitally essential for the welfare of mankind that victory should rest where it finally rested. There have been other wars for individual freedom. There have been other wars for national greatness. 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 keep in mind that the Revolutionary War would have been shorn of wellnigh 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 unable to make good use of it.

It now rests with us in civil life to make good by our deeds the deeds which you who wore the blue did in the great years from ’61 to ’65. The patriotism, the courage, the unflinching resolution and steadfast endurance of the soldiers whose triumph was crowned at Appomattox must be supplemented on our part by civic courage, civic honesty, cool sanity, and steadfast adherence to the immutable laws of righteousness. You left us a reunited country; reunited in fact as well as in name. You left us the right of brotherhood with your gallant foes who wore the gray; the right to feel pride in their courage and their high fealty to an ideal, even though they warred against the stars in their courses. You left us also the most splendid example of what brotherhood really means; for in your careers you showed in practical fashion that the only safety in our American life lies in spurning the accidental distinctions which sunder one man from another, and in paying homage to each man only because of what he essentially is; in stripping off the husks of occupation, of position, of accident, until the soul stands forth revealed, and we know the man only because of his worth as a man.

There was no patent device for securing victory by force of arms forty years ago; and there is no patent device for securing victory for the forces of righteousness in civil life now. In each case the all-important factor was and is the character of the individual man. Good laws in the State, like a good organization in an army, are the expressions of national character. Leaders will be developed in military and in civil life alike; and weapons and tactics change from generation to generation, as methods of achieving good government change in civic affairs; but the fundamental qualities which make for good citizenship do not change any more than the fundamental qualities which make good soldiers. In the long run in the Civil War the thing that counted for more than aught else was the fact that the average American had the fighting edge; had within him the spirit which spurred him on through toil and danger, fatigue and hardship, to the goal of the splendid ultimate triumph. So in achieving good government the fundamental factor must be the character of the average citizen; that average citizen’s power of hatred for what is mean and base and unlovely; his fearless scorn of cowardice and his determination to war unyieldingly against the dark and sordid forces of evil.

The Continental troops who followed Washington were clad in blue and buff, and were armed with clumsy, flintlock muskets. You, who followed Grant, wore the famous old blue uniform, and your weapons had changed as had your uniform; and now the men of the American Army who uphold the honor of the flag in the far tropic lands are yet differently armed and differently clad and differently trained; but the spirit that has driven you all to victory has remained forever unchanged. So it is in civil life. As you did not win in a month or a year, but only after long years of hard and dangerous work, so the fight for governmental honesty and efficiency can be won only by the display of similar patience and similar resolution and power of endurance. We need the same type of character now that was needed by the men who with Washington first inaugurated the system of free popular government, the system of combined liberty and order here on this Continent; that was needed by the men who under Lincoln perpetuated the government which had thus been inaugurated in the days of Washington. The qualities essential to good citizenship and to good public service now are in all their essentials exactly the same as in the days when the first Congresses met to provide for the establishment of the Union; as in the days seventy years later, when the Congresses met which had to provide for its salvation.

There are many qualities which we need alike in private citizen and in public man, but three above all—three for the lack of which no brilliancy and no genius can atone—and those three are courage, honesty, and common-sense.

AT THE UNVEILING OF THE SHERMAN STATUE, WASHINGTON, D. C., OCTOBER 15, 1903

_General Dodge, Veterans of the Four Great Armies, and you, my Fellow-Citizens_:

To-day we meet together to do honor to the memory of one of the great men whom, in the hour of her agony, our Nation brought forth for her preservation. The Civil War was not only in the importance of the issues at stake and of the outcome the greatest of modern times, but it was also, taking into account its duration, the severity of the fighting, and the size of the armies engaged, the greatest since the close of the Napoleonic struggles. Among the generals who rose to high position as leaders of the various armies in the field are many who will be remembered in our history as long as this history itself is remembered. Sheridan, the incarnation of fiery energy and prowess; Thomas, far-sighted, cool-headed, whose steadfast courage burned ever highest in the supreme moment of the crisis; McClellan, with his extraordinary gift for organization; Meade, victor in one of the decisive battles of all time; Hancock, type of the true fighting man among the regulars; Logan, type of the true fighting man among the volunteers—the names of these and of many others will endure so long as our people hold sacred the memory of the fight for union and for liberty. High among these chiefs rise the figures of Grant and of Grant’s great lieutenant, Sherman, whose statue here in the national capital is to-day to be unveiled. It is not necessary here to go over the long roll of Sherman’s mighty feats. They are written large throughout the history of the Civil War. Our memories would be poor indeed if we did not recall them now, as we look along Pennsylvania Avenue and think of the great triumphal march which surged down its length when at the close of the war the victorious armies of the East and of the West met here in the capital of the Nation they had saved.

There is a peculiar fitness in commemorating the great deeds of the soldiers who preserved this Nation, by suitable monuments at the National Capital. I trust we shall soon have a proper statue of Abraham Lincoln, to whom more than to any other one man this Nation owes its salvation. Meanwhile, on behalf of the people of the Nation, I wish to congratulate all of you who have been instrumental in securing the erection of this statue to General Sherman.

The living can best show their respect for the memory of the great dead by the way in which they take to heart and act upon the lessons taught by the lives which made these dead men great. Our homage to-day to the memory of Sherman comes from the depths of our being. We would be unworthy citizens did we not feel profound gratitude toward him, and those like him and under him, who, when the country called in her dire need, sprang forward with such gallant eagerness to answer that call. Their blood and their toil, their endurance and patriotism, have made us and all who come after us forever their debtors. They left us not merely a reunited country, but a country incalculably greater because of its rich heritage in the deeds which thus left it reunited. As a Nation we are the greater, not only for the valor and devotion to duty displayed by the men in blue, who won in the great struggle for the Union, but also for the valor and the loyalty toward what they regarded as right of the men in gray; for this war, thrice fortunate above all other recent wars in its outcome, left to all of us the right of brotherhood alike with valiant victor and valiant vanquished.

Moreover, our homage must not only find expression on our lips; it must also show itself forth in our deeds. It is a great and glorious thing for a nation to be stirred to present triumph by the splendid memories of triumphs in the past. But it is a shameful thing for a nation, if these memories stir it only to empty boastings, to a pride that does not shrink from present abasement, to that self-satisfaction which accepts the high resolve and unbending effort of the father as an excuse for effortless ease or wrongly directed effort in the son. We of the present, if we are true to the past, must show by our lives that we have learned aright the lessons taught by the men who did the mighty deeds of the past. We must have in us the spirit which made the men of the Civil War what they were; the spirit which produced leaders such as Sherman; the spirit which gave to the average soldier the grim tenacity and resourcefulness that made the armies of Grant and Sherman as formidable fighting machines as this world has ever seen. We need their ruggedness of body, their keen and vigorous minds, and above all their dominant quality of forceful character. Their lives teach us in our own lives to strive after, not the thing which is merely pleasant, but the thing which it is our duty to do. The life of duty, not the life of mere ease or mere pleasure—that is the kind of life which makes the great man as it makes the great nation.

We can not afford to lose the virtues which made the men of ’61 to ’65 great in war. No man is warranted in feeling pride in the deeds of the Army and Navy of the past if he does not back up the Army and the Navy of the present. If we are far-sighted in our patriotism, there will be no let-up in the work of building, and of keeping at the highest point of efficiency, a navy suited to the part the United States must hereafter play in the world, and of making and keeping our small Regular Army, which in the event of a great war can never be anything but the nucleus around which our volunteer armies must form themselves, the best army of its size to be found among the nations.

So much for our duties in keeping unstained the honor roll our fathers made in war. It is of even more instant need that we should show their spirit of patriotism in the affairs of peace. The duties of peace are with us always; those of war are but occasional; and with a nation as with a man, the worthiness of life depends upon the way in which the every-day duties are done. The home duties are the vital duties. The nation is nothing but the aggregate of the families within its border; and if the average man is not hard-working, just, and fearless in his dealings with those about him, then our average of public life will in the end be low; for the stream can rise no higher than its source. But in addition we need to remember that a peculiar responsibility rests upon the man in public life. We meet in the capital of the Nation, in the city which owes its existence to the fact that it is the seat of the National Government. It is well for us in this place, and at this time, to remember that exactly as there are certain homely qualities the lack of which will prevent the most brilliant man alive from being a useful soldier to his country, so there are certain homely qualities for the lack of which in the public servant no shrewdness or ability can atone. The greatest leaders, whether in war or in peace, must of course show a peculiar quality of genius; but the most redoubtable armies that have ever existed have been redoubtable because the average soldier, the average officer, possessed to a high degree such comparatively simple qualities as loyalty, courage, and hardihood. And so the most successful governments are those in which the average public servant possesses that variant of loyalty which we call patriotism, together with common-sense and honesty. We can as little afford to tolerate a dishonest man in the public service as a coward in the army. The murderer takes a single life; the corruptionist in public life, whether he be bribe giver or bribe taker, strikes at the heart of the commonwealth. In every public service, as in every army, there will be wrongdoers, there will occur misdeeds. This can not be avoided; but vigilant watch must be kept, and as soon as discovered the wrongdoing must be stopped and the wrongdoers punished. Remember that in popular government we must rely on the people themselves, alike for the punishment and the reformation. Those upon whom our institutions cast the initial duty of bringing malefactors to the bar of justice must be diligent in its discharge; yet in the last resort the success of their efforts to purge the public service of corruption must depend upon the attitude of the courts and of the juries drawn from the people. Leadership is of avail only so far as there is wise and resolute public sentiment behind it.

In the long run, then, it depends upon us ourselves, upon us the people as a whole, whether this Government is or is not to stand in the future as it has stood in the past; and my faith that it will show no falling off is based upon my faith in the character of our average citizenship. The one supreme duty is to try to keep this average high. To this end it is well to keep alive the memory of those men who are fit to serve as examples of what is loftiest and best in American citizenship. Such a man was General Sherman. To very few in any generation is it given to render such services as he rendered; but each of us in his degree can try to show something of those qualities of character upon which, in their sum, the high worth of Sherman rested—his courage, his kindliness, his clean and simple living, his sturdy good sense, his manliness and tenderness in the intimate relations of life, and finally, his inflexible rectitude of soul and his loyalty to all that in this free Republic is hallowed and symbolized by the national flag.

AT THE PAN-AMERICAN MISSIONARY SERVICE, CATHEDRAL OF ST. PETER AND ST. PAUL, MOUNT ST. ALBAN, WASHINGTON, D. C., OCTOBER 25, 1903

_Bishop Satterlee; and to you representatives of the Church both at home and abroad; and to all of you, my friends and fellow-citizens_:

I extend greeting, and in your name I especially welcome those who are in a sense the guests of the nation to-day. In what I am about to say to you, I wish to dwell upon certain thoughts suggested by three different quotations: In the first place, “Thou shalt serve the Lord with all thy heart, with all thy soul, and with all thy mind;” the next, “Be ye therefore wise as serpents and harmless as doves;” and finally, in the Collect which you, Bishop Doane, just read, that “we being ready both in body and soul may cheerfully accomplish those things which thou commandest.”

To an audience such as this I do not have to say anything as to serving the cause of decency with heart and with soul. I want to dwell, however, upon the fact that we have the right to claim from you not merely that you shall have heart in your work, not merely that you shall put your souls into it, but that you shall give the best that your minds have to it also. In the eternal, the unending warfare for righteousness and against evil, the friends of what is good need to remember that in addition to being decent they must be efficient; that good intentions, high purposes, can not be in themselves effective, that they are in no sense a substitute for power to make those purposes, those intentions felt in action. Of course we must first have the purpose and the intention. If our powers are not guided aright it is better that we should not have them at all; but we must have the power itself before we can guide it aright.

In the second text we are told not merely to be harmless as doves, but also to be wise as serpents. One of our American humorists who veils under jocular phrases much deep wisdom—one of those men has remarked that it is much easier to be a harmless dove than a wise serpent. Now, we are not to be excused if we do not show both qualities. It is not very much praise to give a man to say that he is harmless. We have a right to ask that in addition to the fact that he does no harm to any one he shall possess the wisdom and the strength to do good to his neighbor; that together with innocence, together with purity of motive, shall be joined the wisdom and strength to make that purity effective, that motive translated into substantial result.

Finally, in the quotation from the Collect, we ask that we may be made ready both in body and in soul, that we may cheerfully accomplish those things that we are commanded to do. Ready both in body and in soul; that means that we must fit ourselves physically and mentally, fit ourselves to work with the weapons necessary for dealing with this life no less than with the higher, spiritual weapons; fit ourselves thus to do the work commanded; and moreover, to do it cheerfully. Small is our use for the man who individually helps any of us and shows that he does it grudgingly. We had rather not be helped than be helped in such fashion. A favor extended in a manner which shows that the man is sorry that he has to grant it is robbed, sometimes of all, and sometimes of more than all, its benefit. So, in serving the Lord, if we serve him, if we serve the cause of decency, the cause of righteousness, in a way that impresses others with the fact that we are sad in doing it, our service is robbed of an immense proportion of its efficacy. We have a right to ask a cheerful heart, a right to ask a buoyant and cheerful spirit among those to whom is granted the inestimable privilege of doing the Lord’s work in this world. The chance to do work, the duty to do work is not a penalty; it is a privilege. Let me quote a sentence that I have quoted once before: “In this life the man who wins to any goal worth winning almost always comes to that goal with a burden bound on his shoulders.” The man who does best in this world, the woman who does best, almost inevitably does it because he or she carries some burden. Life is so constituted that the man or the woman who has not some responsibility is thereby deprived of the deepest happiness that can come to mankind, because each and every one of us, if he or she is fit to live in the world must be conscious that responsibility always rests on him or on her—the responsibility of duty toward those dependent upon us; the responsibility of duty toward our families, toward our friends, toward our fellow-citizens; the responsibility of duty to wife and child, to the state, to the church. Not only can no man shirk some or all of those responsibilities, but no man worth his salt will wish to shirk them. On the contrary, he will welcome thrice over the fortune that puts them upon him.