£ 642 • 096 -Opy I A MEMORIAL-DAY ADDRESS Delivered before the members of Lincoln Post, in Magf«ire^s Opera House, Butte, Montana, Monday Evening, May 30, J 898, by J, H. Dttrston, Editor of the Anaconda Standard.^ ^ FOR PRIVATE CIRCULATION. 'UPUCATEETOHANOEO. AUG 2 1907 By 'lTaMfet.% f3Ag '07 A Memorial-Day Address What constitutes a state? Not high-raised battlement or labored mound, Thick wall or moated ffate ; Not cities proud with spires and turrets crowned ; Not bays and broad-armed ports, Where, laughing at the storm, rich navies ride; Not starred and spangled courts. Where low-browed baseness wafts perfume to pride. No — men, high-minded men. Men who their duties know, But know their rights, and, knowing, dare maintain. Prevent the long-aimed blow, And crush the tyrant while they rend the chain ; These constitute a state. A MEMORIAL-DAY ADDRESS. Members of Lincoln Post, Ladies and Gentlemen : Under the wealth of shade at historic Arlington, crowning a bluff along whose base the waters of the Potomac widen on their way to the sea, stands a tomb with this inscription: "Here lie the bones of 2,111 unknown soldiers. Their remains could not be identified, but their names are recorded in the archives of their country, and its grateful citizens honor them as of the noble army of martyrs." Not far away, at Arlington, Sheridan and Porter sleep. Beyond are the graves of Harney and Crook and Meigs. In the park that spreads over the neighboring plateau stretch long lines of modest headstones that mark the resting place of soldiers — so perfect is the align- ment that fancy can picture the battalioned dead drawn up for dress parade. There are fifteen thousand of these silent senti- nels at Arlington. Some of them give the name and the num- ber of the regiment of the hero whose mound they guard ; on more than four thousand of them the brief inscription is the melancholy word "unknown." On American battlefields which their valor made famous, regiments of soldiers are buried. In church-yards throughout the land the graves of veterans cluster about monuments in which gratitude has sought ex- pression through enduring forms of art. Hardly a hamlet in the land but has within its borders the spot where some com- rade's dust is cherished. These, all, were citizen soldiers whose deeds the nation has commemorated to-day in the gentle min- istry of flowers. The years that separate us from the realities of the civil war deepen the interest taken in the observance of Memorial day. The recollection of the events in which these veterans had a share is vivid in communities that had not even been spoken into being when war was waging. The place where we meet to-night was like a woodland wilderness a little more than a third of a century ago, when the nation dwelt under the shadow of anxiety and the continent trembled beneath the tread of a million armed men. Hither we have come, during the years that are sped, to make for ourselves and for our children, amid Montana's encompassing hills, homes that are peaceful and prosperous because war made peace and prosperity possible ; because the union of the states was made perfect ; because each shining star was left undimmed on the flag whose ample folds belt the united continent in beauty as with a scarf. To these homes, so far from the bivouac and battlefield of the re- bellion, we, sons and daughters of the republic, brought with us the vmdying memory of what the soldier did and a sentiment of gratitude that shall not perish. We are taught that there is not an angel in all the hosts of heaven but wields its blessed in- fluence on earth in those who loved it here. So shall the service of the soldier of the civil war yield its beneficent fruit as long as the fires of patriotism warm the hearts of a redeemed people. We are not met to take part in the hilarities of a festival ; this is a day of remembrance. Its motive is gratitude ; its purpose is fraternal ; its inspiration is love. Garlands are its emblem — there is no sting in its springtide buds ; there is no bitterness in the incense of its flowers. To-day gray veterans have laid fragrant tributes above the dust of their fallen com- rades. In Butte's cemetery, they decorated the graves alike of Union soldier and Confederate comrade. This company of their fellow citizens lienors the act ; surely it cannot fan into flame the dead embers of sectionalism. Young men and women have witnessed the offering ; it will not waken a sentiment of re- sentment. And we bring these annual tributes, not chiefly to those who sleep in lofty sepuJchers, but especially to each forgotten soldier on whose unkept grave, as if of heaven's planting, the wild flower nods in the breeze of the morning or unfolds itself to the kiss of May day showers. These unmarked graves. These unsung soldiers. It must be that God hath given his angels charge concerning them. May we not believe that availing tears have blotted out the transgressions of those who atoned for so much when they gave their lives for their country ? The hearty celebration of this anniversary is made possible by the fact that, in respect to causes, the struggle that has its sequel in Memorial day was unlike any other war that was ever fought. The mission of the civil war was to write the defini- tion of a word. That word is sovereignty. The meaning of the word perplexed the members of the convention in which our constitution was framed. It disturbed our fathers, the citizens of the young states, at the time when the constitution was before them awaiting their approval. It evolved a rich literature. It was the theme of the first inquiry made by the nation's highest couit. It brought into being two schools of American statesmen and jurists. These men were unselfish lovers of their country, yet it must be said that history has not stamped the seal of its approval upon that which some of them taught. For more than eighty years this word was the theme of dispute. There entered into the controversy the opinions and preferences and prejudices of the people respecting the sub- ject of slavery ; anger took at length the place of calmness ; and when the memorable shot sped across the waters of Charleston harbor, the issue was removed from forum to field, from the arena of debate to the arbitrament of the sword, and the question which the jurists and the statesmen could not answer, became a problem which the common people solved. They defined the word— they wrote the definition in blood. For most of us the war that was thus made inevitable lives only in its traditions. Xot so with these veterans. To them these recurring anniversaries bring back memories of camp and field, of march and wound and battle, of disheartening repulse, sometimes, as well as of inspiring triumph, of requiem as well as of anthem — memories of Big Bethel and Ball's Bluff, of Donelson and Shiloh, of Fair Oaks and Cedar Mountain, of Malvern Hill and Chancellorsville, of Gettysburg and Winches- ter ; enduring privations in arduous western campaigns, suf- fering on the Peninsula; following where Meade or Logan or McDowell led; with Thomas at Chickamauga or with Sedgwick in the AVilderness; fighting above the clouds with Hooker at Lookout Mountain; sweeping across Georgia with Sherman; dashing through the valley with Sheridan— how grandly the list lengthens of intrepid commanders, the lustre of whose fame is dimmed only by the overshadowing glory of those whose names war made immortal ! Out of the hosts that made up the armies of the civil war, you, comrades, have been spared. Length of day and long life have been added unto you, that you might know how lasting the peace that was achieved, how complete the reconciliation, how ample the vindication of the Union; that you might see how patriotism has deepened, how the flag has become a hal- lowed emblem and American citizenship a coveted possession. Rejoice that it was your lot to have shared in the observance of this Memorial day, which has its distinction in the splendid fact that the uprising of the iNorth and the South in defense of your country against a foreign foe has made perfect the blending of the blue and gray. Read the crowning triumph of the war you helped to fight on the page of history that presently will teU how Dewey, under whose feet a Union ship once went down in the waters of the ]\Iississippi, carried the flag safe to the gates of Manila and gave it glory there, and how, less than a lifetime after Appomattox, a confederate general, Fitzhugh Lee, who had handed over his sword in surrender to Meade at Farmville, ranked high among the Union soldiers who put the ill-used island of the Antilles under the shelter of the stars and stripes and bade downtrodden Cuba stand up and be free ! It is not for you to bear arms in the war upon which we now have entered— many of you are approaching venerable years. Yet permit this anniversary to remind you of the new duties which new times bring. You have not forgotten that when you were soldiers the fear found lodgment in the minds of some of your countrymen that the spirit of imperialism, which the founders of our government so much dreaded, would make its baneful influence felt. Nor have you forgotten that, even while hills and valleys were echoing the shouts of the vic- tors, the soldier, as if to resent the suspicion, hastened home to field or forge, to shop or store — to the peaceful pursuits of civil life. The dread some of your countrymen had harbored proved idle. It may be, again to-day, that forebodings respecting the future are likewise vain. Yet we have reached the ambitious 6 point where, unless wise counsels prevail, we shall be hurried on toward schemes of aggrandizement and colonization which are un-American, even if they are not perilous. Lift up your voice against the sophistry which aims to persuade us that it is well for this country to add to its population millions of beings who must be subjects, but who cannot be citizens, so manifest their unfitness. Make vigorous your protest against the propo- sition that we have need of trade at marts whose highways must be held open with battleships. Exhort your neighbors, your townsmen, your fellow citizens that they spend their ener- gies in the effort to make fruitful our own unmatched domain, which wants only the touch of intelligent human effort, and that we leave the lands from which wide seas separate us to those in overcrowded Europe who have lack of standing room and who are compelled to go away from home to find it. Immigration wisely regulated, in association with an en- lightened policy respecting irrigation in the Northwest, is worth immensely more to our country than an oceanful of islands which are the homes of millions of men whose traits and aspiration and destiny are irreconcilably unlike our own. Each section of arid land made fertile, in our own common- wealth, with its thrifty harvest of grain waving like a golden sea, means more of benefit and blessing for our country than the costly product of foundry and machine shop wrought into floating acres of the murderous instrumentalities for war. If, comrades, you share these opinions, preach them. Our country will do right; it surely will be right. Yet always it has need of guidance, and its glory is that in the common people it finds its guides; they shape its destinies. So that in the days of this new war, which has a holy purpose, and which, every- where, American citizenship sustains with ardent loyalty, it is well that the veteran soldier counsel his brethren that we guard lest the evil passion for conquest lure us, lest we depart from the teachings of the fathers, whose creed it was that in our steadfast abstinence from foreign entanglement the highest hopes of the republic rest. The peace of God abide with the dead, your departed com- rades. Be it your prayer, as the shadows of this Memorial day deepen, that He in whose hands are the ways of nations and of men may have in his watchful care the volunteers who lately have gone forth from our own beloved state to uphold in dis- tant lands the honor of the flag. Long may you be spared, to see the sun of the republic moving in majesty, yet always un- erringly, toward its unclouded zenith. And when the sum- mons comes that bids you gird yourselves for the mysterious march on which no comrade shall attend you, may your por- tion be the infinite love of the compassionate Savior of the World ! 013 785 183 ••