Tuesday, December 6, 2011

USS Ward, Report of Pearl Harbor Attack


DD139/A16-3(7--)/
U.S.S. Ward Pearl Harbor, T.H.
December 13, 1941.

From: Commanding Officer.
To: The Commandant, Fourteenth Naval District.
(1) Commander Destroyer Division EIGHTY.
(2) Commander Inshore Patrol.

Subject: Sinking of a Japanese Submarine by U.S.S. Ward.

While patrolling Pearl Harbor Entrance on Sunday, December 7, 1941, the U.S.S. Ward attacked an unidentified submarine in the Restricted Area off the Harbor.

The facts are as follows:

At 0637 the Officer-of-the-Deck said, "Captain come on the bridge". A conning tower with periscope of submarine was visible. She was apparently headed for Pearl Harbor trailing the U.S.S. Antares. The Antares was standing toward the channel entrance towing a lighter.

At 0640 the attack was started. The Ward bore down on the submarine while accelerating from 5 to 25 knots.

At 0645 the Ward opened fire with No. 1 and 3 guns and began dropping depth charges. One shot was fired from each gun. The shot from No. 1 gun missed, passing directly over the conning tower. The shot from No. 3 gun fired at a range of 560 yards or less struck the submarine at the waterline which was the junction of the hull and coning tower. Damage was seen by several members of the crew. This was a square positive hit. There was no evidence of ricochet. The submarine was seen to heel over to starboard. The projectile was not seen to explode outside the hull of the submarine. There was no splash of any size that might results from an explosion or ricochet.

Immediately after being hit the submarine appeared to slow and sink. She ran into our depth charge barrage and appeared to be directly over an exploding charge. The depth charges were set for 100 feet.

The submarine sank in 1200 feet of water and could not be located with supersonic detector. There was a large amount of oil on the surface where the depth charges exploded.

The attack was made at 0645 which was before Pearl Harbor was bombed by Japanese planes.

A dispatch by voice transmission was sent to Commandant, Fourteenth Naval District at 0645 which stated:

"We have attacked, fired upon, and dropped depth charges on a submarine operating in defensive sea areas."

The performance of duty by the officers and men during this attack was in accordance with the traditions of this service.

Pertinent Information

Appearance of submarine: Cylindrical tube about 80 feet long with small oval shaped conning tower. It had no deck. It was painted dark green and was covered with moss indicating that it had been at sea for a considerable period.

Behavior during attack: In spite of the five minute run from the time of sighting and time of attack, the submarine apparently did not see or detect the Ward. It was making from 8 to 10 knots and was apparently bent on following the Antares into port. Exact distances are not known but at the time of the first shot the range was not more than 100 yards and for the second shot the range was 50 yards or less. The submarine passed very close to our stern.

[signed]
W.W. OUTERBRIDGE

Tuesday, May 10, 2011

Chief Joseph Nez Pierce (1840-1904)

Chief Joseph, known by his people as In-mut-too-yah-lat-lat (Thunder coming up over the land from the water), was best known for his resistance to the U.S. Government's attempts to force his tribe onto reservations. The Nez Perce were a peaceful nation spread from Idaho to Northern Washington. The tribe had maintained good relations with the whites after the Lewis and Clark expedition. Joseph spent much of his early childhood at a mission maintained by Christian missionaries.


In 1855 Chief Joseph's father, Old Joseph, signed a treaty with the U.S. that allowed his people to retain much of their traditional lands. In 1863 another treaty was created that severely reduced the amount of land, but Old Joseph maintained that this second treaty was never agreed to by his people.


A showdown over the second "non-treaty" came after Chief Joseph assumed his role as Chief in 1877. After months of fighting and forced marches, many of the Nez Perce were sent to a reservation in what is now Oklahoma, where many died from malaria and starvation. Chief Joseph tried every possible appeal to the federal authorities to return the Nez Perce to the land of their ancestors. In 1885, he was sent along with many of his band to a reservation in Washington where, according to the reservation doctor, he later died of a broken heart.


Quotes from Chief Joseph:


* I have carried a heavy load on my back ever since I was a boy. I realized then that we could not hold our own with the white men. We were like deer. They were like grizzly bears. We had small country. Their country was large. We were contented to let things remain as the Great Spirit Chief made them. They were not, and would change the rivers and mountains if they did not suit them.


* I am tired of fighting.... from where the sun now stands, I will fight no more.


* Our fathers gave us many laws, which they had learned from their fathers. These laws were good. They told us to treat all people as they treated us; that we should never be the first to break a bargain; that is was a disgrace to tell a lie; that we should speak only the truth; that it was a shame for one man to take another's wife or his property without paying for it.


* Suppose a white man should come to me and say, "Joseph, I like your horses. I want to buy them." I say to him, "No, my horses suit me; I will not sell them." Then he goes to my neighbor and says, "Pay me money, and I will sell you Joseph’s horses." The white man returns to me and says, "Joseph, I have bought your horses and you must let me have them." If we sold our lands to the government, this is the way they bought them.


* I am not a child, I think for myself. No man can think for me.


* If the white man wants to live in peace with the Indian, he can live in peace. Treat all men alike. Give them a chance to live and grow.


* All men were made brothers. The earth is the mother of all people, and all people should have equal rights upon it. You might as well expect the rivers to run backward as that any man who was born free should be contented when penned up and denied liberty to go where he pleases.


* If you tie a horse to a stake, do you expect him to grow fat? If you pen an Indian up on a small spot of earth, and compel him to stay there, he will not be contented, nor will he grow and prosper.


* The earth and myself are of one mind.


* We were taught to believe that the Great Spirit sees and hears everything, and that he never forgets, that hereafter he will give every man a spirit home according to his deserts; If he has been a good man, he will have a good home; if he has been a bad man, he will have a bad home.


* This I believe, and all my people believe the same.


* Good words do not last long unless they amount to something. Words do not pay for my dead people. They do not pay for my country, now overrun by white men. They do not protect my father’s grave. They do not pay for all my horses and cattle.


* Good words cannot give me back my children. Good words will not give my people good health and stop them from dying. Good words will not get my people a home where they can live in peace and take care of themselves.


* I am tired of talk that comes to nothing It makes my heart sick when I remember all the good words and all the broken promises. There has been too much talking by men who had no right to talk.


* It does not require many words to speak the truth.


* We do not want churches because they will teach us to quarrel about God, as the Catholics and Protestants do. We do not want that.


* We may quarrel with men about things on earth, but we never quarrel about the Great Spirit.


* I believe much trouble and blood would be saved if we opened our hearts more. I will tell you in my way how the Indian sees things. The white man has more words to tell you how they look to him, but is does not require many words to seek the truth.


* Too many misinterpretations have been made... too many misunderstandings...


* The Great Spirit Chief who rules above all will smile upon this land... and this time the Indian race is waiting and praying.


* I am tired of talk that comes to nothing.

Address by William Tecumseh Sherman (1820-1891)

Ladies and Gentlemen, and Fellow-Citizens:


When I accepted the invitation to come over to your town and join with you in the festivities of this Fourth of July, I little dreamed I would be ushered so soon upon the stage. I thought some younger and more ambitious man would break the way, and prepare for those who were to follow.


But, I find myself here at your bidding. I believe I have never failed you, and I will try to do my best now. I think every old soldier will give me full credit for being in earnest.


It is a long time, my friends, since I have seen a Fourth of July within the groves with ladies and children, all free in the woods of nature. I have seen crowds of all kinds in the cities and on the battle-fields, but I cannot recollect having seen a crowd of ladies and children all mingled together in the native forest, for many, many years.


I trust you will bear with me if my voice does not reach you all, for I am not accustomed to pitch it through the woods and over the heads of a crowd like this, and I hope you will be as quiet and silent as possible.


I regret that Governor Oglesby is unwell, for I thought that he, with his herculean frame and giant intellect, would take the load off my shoulders; but I am going to leave a big pile for my friend John Logan, who has got to fight it through. [Laughter.] Now, my friends and fellow soldiers, with this introduction, let me ask you if we have not a right to come here together and be satisfied and rejoice. [Applause.] We have a right to come here and say that this is our National day, and that we will celebrate it just when and how we please--that we will fire guns or raise flags or do what we please, for it is our day--your day, my day. We are all free in this country. And when did we acquire this freedom? Just ninety years ago, as these young ladies who sang to us in so sweet a melody served to remind us just nine years ago it was boldly proclaimed to the whole world that a new nation was born.


I wish they had called it Columbia, but they called it the United States of America, and we have inherited the name and the fame, and now it becomes us to transmit both to those who may come after us, and we will do it. [Cheers.] But, my friends, inheriting a national name on that day ninety years ago we can look back into the past and into the still darker future, and see whether we were entitled to that name.


I remember well to have read of Columbus on his voyage of discovery, and I have always felt for him as he stood by that foremast looking into the future, into the unknown distance of time, and never doubting but what he would discover at last the land which we have inherited. I would rather have him standing there by that foremast as our National emblem than almost anything else--standing there full of confidence and hope, looking into the future, never doubting and regardless of the tumult and turmoil around him. He did discover our country and then the nations of the earth commenced grasping for territory--he Spaniard for his gold and for the fountain of perpetual youth. He has found his gold and passed away. The English, the Swedes, the Germans--all came in search of fertile lands. They looked for the land which would remain forever yielding its grain, its grass and its timber; so that not only they, but their children after them should live and enjoy the fruits of their labor.


The Spaniards have nearly vanished from our territory, but the English, the Swedes, the Germans, the French remain, and their posterity will remain till the end of time.


From this I infer the fact that the soil and climate such as you enjoy here in Illinois is the wealth of America not alone its mineral resources. They are incidental. They are dug up and are taken away, but this soil remains to you today, next year and forever to the end of time; and will produce food and raiment for all men on the face of the earth.


Then comes the intellectual part of our history. Look at Franklin drawing from the clouds the agency of electricity, so that now you are able to communicate with your friends far away that you are well and comfortably assembled together. He is also another man whom we should cherish with pride--he and other men who made your constitution according to the best of their understanding, believing that it would fulfill the destiny for which they contemplated it. No one doubted that it was fair upon its face; every paragraph had been well studied, and it did work like a charm, and I still think it is the best heritage which they could have given us.


But like many of the people of the world, are we not governed by reason alone. We are full of passion; I am full of passion and sometimes act wildly. So do you, and so do all men. We do not follow the dictates of our intellect and reason; but are swayed hither and thither by passion. Passion carried us into one war with England; then came the Mexican War, and finally the great war which is now over, thank God, and you are the living witnesses of it.


I know that you connect my name with this last war; but I must confess there were phases which I was powerless to meet. Everyone of you have seen and comprehended perfectly the whole problem. A part of our people supposing they had sustained wrongs endeavored to break down our Government. You said no, they said yes. There was no use disguising it further, it had to be fought out. All arguments were at an end. All discussion should have ceased then and there; and every man capable of bearing arms should have siezed [sic] his musket and rushed to the standard of his country and rescued it from danger as you did.


But it was difficult for a time, as you all know, to comprehend that any part of the American people would rebel against any other part. I could not believe it until I saw it. I doubt if any man in Illinois comprehended in the beginning that we were to be swamped in civil war. But when at last it flashed upon us how majestically rose our people. It is one of the proudest points in our history that our young men, regardless of party and of former associations, rushed to the rescue of that flag which is the symbol of our Nation and rescued it. [Cheers.]


But I hope that never, never again will you be called on to be exposed, as you were, to the dangers and vicissitudes of war. But I believe that you, and such as you that fill our Western country and the far off East, will solve and make plain that course which will bring us all back to our true position in reference to National right and National duty.


[At this point Governor Oglesby made his appearance on the platform and was received with loud cheers.]


As I remarked in the first place, ladies and gentlemen, I do not intend to make a Fourth of July speech, and I am glad to see that the Governor has come to my rescue. There are two or three points in relation to the last war upon which I want the Illinois boys to understand how I feel, because in those days you remember I could not talk to you very confidentially. [Laughter.] I believe, as a general rule, there was a full understanding among the Generals of the army; but even we had to be very careful lest information of our intentions should get abroad and result in your loss. If I had said in advance that I was going to do a certain thing, many of you now living might not be here now. It was our desire--the desire of every officer in the army, every general officer--to accomplish the object in view, and as far as possible restore you back in health to your families.


We did not like to see blood shed, but we were determined to produce results. Now, what were those results? To make every man, woman and child in the South feel that if they had rebelled against the flag of our country they must die or submit. [Loud cheers.] That was the problem which we had to solve. As long as they met us man to man, and face to face, we went at them and struck in front and rear. And when they tried the game of drawing us farther and farther away--compelling us to leave our garrisons or guard here, so as to absorb our strength--when they undertook to play that game, it became necessary for us to defeat it, and to make it appear that we were going to do one thing, and then go and do another. [Laughter.] Now you all remember when we took Atlanta it looked as though with our army strung along a line of six or seven hundred miles the head of the column would be crushed.


If I had gone on stringing out my forces would there not have been a time when the head of that column would have been crushed in? You soldiers are generals enough to see that. Therefore I resolved in my mind to stop the game of guarding their cities, and destroy their cities. [Cheers.]


Now, my friends, I know there are parties who denounce me as inhuman. I appeal to you if I have not always been kind and considerate to you. [Cheers.] I care not what they say. [Bully for you and cheers.] I say that it ceased to be our duty to guard their cities any longer, and had I gone on stringing out my column, little by little, some of your Illinois regiments would not have come home, but would have been crushed. Therefore I determined to go through their country, and so I took one army myself and gave my friend George Thomas the other, and we whaled away with both. [Loud cheers.] Therefore we destroyed Atlanta, and if we had destroyed all the cities of the South in order to bring about the result in view it would have been right. [Loud cheers.]


The course we pursued did produce the desired result, and now, ladies, you see your young friends returned to you, wives see their husbands-- all reunited in this beautiful grove in Illinois, and God knows, I hope you will never be sent forth again; but if you are, I know you will respond more promptly than you did before. [Loud cheers.]


As to the future, I have been over all that part of the country which is assigned to me, and I have never yet, at any period of our history, seen the country looking so prosperous, the grain growing so luxuriantly, and the people so well contented and happy, the table so bountifully spread; and all this, too, out on the plains of Kansas where, six years ago, it required an escort of three hundred men to guard an officer sent to pay off a garrison. Now I can go, and anybody can go with a single horse a way out to the limits of Kansas, or even to Colorado, without an escort, and that too at the close of a long and terrible war. So that I say that we are progressing to the end we have in view, and that whether the politicians, whether the statesmen, I will call them, the judges and lawyers, will adopt a policy to produce the desired result, I don't know and don't much care, because it will be done anyhow. [Laughter and cheers.] I say if the farmers, mechanics and businessmen will go on and attend to their own business the people of Missouri will do the same. Iowa the same, and so it will be all over the Western and Northern country, and politicians will be compelled to adapt their policy to this end--and that is the true end, namely, the great prosperity of our country.


Therefore it is unnecessary to even allude to the position in which our national affairs are placed, for I do not pretend to comprehend or understand them. It is not my task; but it is my task to see that the forces placed at my disposal to put down opposition to the laws quickly and forever, do their duty. [Cheers.] Whenever the United States Marshal comes to me and tells me that his power is resisted, and he has not sufficient civil force to execute the laws, if I have soldiers I will go to his assistance and see that the laws are enforced. And my friends, if that rule is carried out in the land, if the laws of Congress are to be enforced wherever this flag floats, then in truth are we a nation to all intents and purposes, at home and abroad.


I have also had occasion to meet with a great many foreigners of late and I tell you they have a great deal of respect for us; far more than they did five years ago, and they have reason to. At the same time I believe the policy that General Washington laid down is the true one, not to interfere with other people. We have plenty to do ourselves, at home. [We?] have land enough in all [causes?] level land, mountain land [?] for that three hundred millions of people. [?] All the riches of the [?]. Therefore, I hope we will never be jealous of our neighbors' prosperity, and that our people will not become involved with any foreign nations; but when it becomes necessary to assert our authority with foreign nations, let Congress and the Executive do it by due course of law, and then it becomes our right and not before. [Cheers.] Now, fellow soldiers, I have spoken longer than I could wish, but I beg you would consider it as a measure of my love for the old army. I do not believe you realize or understand the feeling which I had for you, as you left all behind you and followed me blindly, not knowing what was transpiring in my mind--followed me in my long and devious career without asking any questions--cheerfully and well. I thank you from the bottom of my heart, because then you were serving your country. You realize it now--you and I surviving. I did not expect to survive the war, but I have survived it, and you have survived it, and now from the bottom of my heart I thank you for that cheerful performance of your duty-- noble and manly endurance which at last caused the clouds of war to vanish, and enable our flag to float triumphantly over our whole land.


And now, here we are in peace and quiet at home in the midst of plenty, prosperity and kind friends, and I trust these old flags may remain with you forever.


Presented in Salem, Illinois, on July 4, 1866

Tuesday, May 3, 2011

Mayor Rudolph Giuliani's speech to the United Nations

Thank you President of the General Assembly, Dr. Han Seung-Soo, and Secretary General Annan.
And thank you very much for the opportunity to speak, and also for the consideration you showed the city in putting off your general session. And as I explained to the secretary general and the president of the General Assembly, we are now open and we're ready, and at any time that we can arrange it, we look forward to having your heads of state and your foreign ministers here for that session.
On September 11, 2001, New York City, the most diverse city in the world, was viciously attacked in an unprovoked act of war. More than 5,000 innocent men, women and children of every race, religion and ethnicity are lost. Among these were people from 80 different nations.
To their representatives here today, I offer my condolences to you as well on behalf of all New Yorkers who share this lost with you.
This was the deadliest terrorist attack in history. It claimed more lives than Pearl Harbor or D-Day. This was not just an attack on the city of New York or on the United States of America. It was an the attack of the very idea of a free, inclusive and civil society. It was a direct assault on the founding principles of the United Nations itself.
The preamble to the U.N. charter states that this organization exists to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights in the dignity and worth of the human person, to practice tolerance and live together in peace as good neighbors, and to unite our strength to maintain international peace and security.
Indeed, this vicious attack places in jeopardy the whole purpose of the United Nations. Terrorism is based on the persistent and deliberate violation of fundamental human rights. With bullets and bombs and now with hijacked airplanes, terrorists deny the dignity of human life. Terrorism preys particularly on cultures and communities that practice openness and tolerance. Their targeting of innocent civilians mocks the efforts of those who seek to live together in peace as neighbors; it defies the very notion of being a neighbor.
This massive attack was intended to break our spirit; it has not done that. It's made us stronger, more determined and more resolved. The bravery of our firefighters, our police officers, our emergency workers, and civilians, we may never learn of, in saving over 25,000 lives that day and carrying out the most effective rescue operation in our history, inspires all of us.
I'm very honored to have with me as their representatives, the fire commissioner of New York City, Tom Von Essen.
Tom, please stand up.
And the police commissioner of New York City, Bernard Kerik.
The determination, resolve and leadership of President George W. Bush has unified America and all decent men and women around the world. And the response of many of your nations, your leaders and people, spontaneously demonstrating in the days after the attack your support for New York and America, and your understanding of what needs to be done to remove the threat of terrorism, gives us great, great hope that we will prevail.
The strength of America's response, please understand, flows from the principles upon which we stand. Americans are not a single ethnic group.
Americans are not of one race or one religion. Americans emerged from all of your nations. We're defined as Americans by our beliefs, not by our ethnic origins, our race or our religion. Our belief in religious freedom, political freedom, economic freedom, that's what makes an American. Our belief in democracy, the rule of law, and respect for human life, that's how you become an American.
It's these very principles and the opportunities these principles give to so many to create a better life for themselves and their families that make America and New York a shining city on a hill. There's no nation in the history of the world and no city that has seen more immigrants in less time than America. And people continue to come here in large, large numbers to seek freedom, opportunity, decency, civility.
Each of your nations, I'm certain, has contributed citizens to the United States and to New York. I believe I can take every one of you someplace in New York City, and you can find someone from your country, someone from your village or town, that speaks your language and practices your religion. In each of your lands, there are many who are Americans in spirit by virtue of their commitment to our shared principles.
It's tragic and perverse that it's because of these very principles, particularly our religious, political, and economic freedoms, that we find ourselves under attack by terrorists. Our freedom threatens them, because they know if our ideas of freedom gain a foothold among their people, it will destroy their power. So they strike out against us to keep those ideas from reaching their people.
The best long-term deterrent and approach to terrorism, obviously is the spread of the principles of freedom and democracy and the rule of law and respect for human life. The more that spreads around the globe, the safer we will all be. These are very, very powerful ideas. And once they gain a foothold, they cannot be stopped.
In fact, the rise that we've seen in terrorism and terrorist groups, I believe, is in no small measure a response to the spread of these ideas, freedom and democracy, to many nations, particularly over the past 15 years. The terrorists have no ideas or ideals with which to combat freedom and democracy. So their only defense is to strike out against innocent civilians, destroying human life in massive numbers and hoping to deter all of us from our pursuit and expansion of freedom.
But the long-term deterrent of spreading our ideals throughout the world is just not enough and may never be realized if we do not act, and act together, to remove the clear and present danger posed by terrorism and terrorists.
The United Nations must hold accountable any country that supports or condones terrorism. Otherwise, you will fail in your primary mission as peacekeeper. It must ostracize any nation that supports terrorism. It must isolate any nation that remains neutral in the fight against terrorism.
Now is the time in the words of your charter, the United Nations Charter, ``to unite our strength to maintain international peace and security.'' This is not a time for further study or vague directives. The evidence of terrorism's brutality and inhumanity, of its contempt for life and the concept of peace is lying beneath the rubble of the World Trade Center, less than two miles from where we meet today.
Look at that destruction, that massive, senseless, cruel loss of human life, and then, I ask you to look in your hearts and recognize that there is no room for neutrality on the issue of terrorism. You're either with civilization or with terrorists.
On one side is democracy, the rule of law and respect for human life. On the other, it's tyranny, arbitrary executions and mass murder. We're right and they're wrong. It's as simple as that. And by that I mean that America and its allies are right about democracy, about religious, political and economic freedom. And the terrorists are wrong and, in fact, evil in their mass destruction of human life in the name of addressing alleged injustices.
Let those who say that we must understand the reasons for terrorism, come with me to the thousands of funerals we're having in New York City--thousands--and explain those insane maniacal reasons to the children who will grow up without fathers and mothers and to the parents who have had their children ripped from them for no reason at all. Instead, I ask each of you to allow me to say at those funerals that your nation stands with America in making a solemn promise and pledge that we will achieve unconditional victory over terrorism and terrorists.
There's no excuse for mass murder, just as there's no excuse for genocide. Those who practice terrorism, murdering or victimizing innocent civilians lose any right to have their cause understood by decent people and lawful nations. On this issue, terrorism, the United Nations must draw a line. The era of moral relativism between those who practice or condone terrorism and those nations who stand up against it must end. Moral relativism doesn't have a place in this discussion and debate.
There's no moral way to sympathize with grossly immoral actions. And by so doing and by trying to do that, unfortunately, a fertile field has been created in which terrorism has grown. The best and most practical way to promote peace is to stand up to terror and intimidation.
The Security Council's unanimous passage of Resolution 1373 adopting wide-ranging antiterrorism measures into the international community is a very good first step. It's necessary to establish accountability for the subsidizing of terrorism.
As a former united states attorney I am particularly encouraged that the United Nations has answered President Bush's call to cut terrorists off from their money and their funding. It's enormously important. We've done that successfully with organized crime groups in America. By taking away their ability to mass large amounts of money, you take away their ability to have others carry on their functioning for them even if they're removed, arrested, prosecuted or eliminated through war or through law enforcement. It cuts off the life blood of the organization. So I believe there was a very good first step.
But now it's up to the member states to enforce this and other aspects of the resolution and for the United Nations to enforce these new mechanisms to take the financial base away from the terrorists. Take away their money, take away their access to money and you reduce their ability to carry out complex missions.
Each of you sitting in this room is here because of your country's commitment to being part of the family of nations. We need to unite now as a family as never before across all of our differences in recognition of the fact that the United Nations stands for the proposition that human beings have more in common than divide us. If you need to be reminded of this, you don't need to look very far.
Just go outside for a walk in the streets and the parks of New York City. You can't walk a block or two blocks in New York City without seeing somebody that looks different than you, acts different than you, talks different than you, believes different than you. If you grow up in New York City you learn that and then you look something, if you're an intelligent or decent person, you learn that all those differences are nothing in comparison to the things that unite us.
We're a city of immigrants unlike any other city, within a nation of immigrants. Like the victims of the World Trade Center attack, we're of every race, we're of every religion, we're of every ethnicity and our diversity has been our greatest source of strength.
It's the thing that renews us and revives us in every generation, our openness to new people from all over the world. So from the first day of this attack, an attack on New York, on America and, I believe, on the basic principles that underlie this organization.
I've told the people of New York that we should not allow this to divide us, because then we would really lose what this city is all about. we have a very, very strong--we have very strong and vibrant Muslim and Arab communities in New York City. They are an equally important part of the life of our city. We respect their religious beliefs. We respect everyone's religious beliefs. That's what America is about and that's what New York City is all about.
I've urged New Yorkers not to engage in any form of group blame or group hatred. This is exactly the evil that we're confront with these terrorists. And if we're going to prevail over them, over terror, them our ideals and principles and values must transcend all forms of prejudice. This is a very important part of the struggle against terrorism.
This is not a dispute between religions or ethnic groups. All religions, all decent people are united in their desire to achieve peace and understand that we have to eliminate terrorism. We're not divided about this.
There have been many days in New York, when I was running for mayor and since I've been mayor, that many times, when I would have a weekend in which I would go to a Mosque on a Friday and synagogue on a Saturday and a church--sometimes two churches--on a Sunday.
And by the time I finished, I would say to myself, I know that we're getting through to God. We're talking to him in every language that he understands. We're using every liturgy that exists, and I know we're getting through to the same God.
We may be doing it in slightly different ways. God is known by many different names and many different traditions, but identified by one consistent feeling: love--love for humanity, particularly love for our children. Love does eventually conquer hate. I believe that; I'm sure you do.
But it also needs our help. Good intentions alone are not enough to conquer evil. Remember British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain who, armed only with good intentions, negotiated with the Nazis and emerged hopeful that he had achieved peace in his time.
Hitler's wave of terror was only encouraged by these attempts at appeasement. At the cost of millions of lives, we've learned that words alone, although important, are not enough to guarantee peace. It is action alone that counts.
For the United Nations and individual nations, decisive action is needed to stop terrorism from ever orphaning another child. That's for nations. For individuals, the most effective course of action they can take to aid our recovery is to be determined to go ahead with their lives. We can't let terrorists change the way we live, otherwise, they will have succeeded. In some ways, the resilience of life in New York City is the ultimate sign of defiance to terrorists.
We call ourselves the capital of the world, in large part, because we're the most diverse city in the world and we're the home of the United Nations. So that spirit of unity, amid all our diversity, has never, ever been stronger.
On Saturday night, I walked through Times Square. It was crowded, it was bright, it was lively. Thousands of people were visiting from all parts of the United States and all parts of the world. And many of them came up to me and they shook my hand and patted me on the back and said, ``We're here because we want to show our support for the city of New York. And that's where there's never been a better time to come to New York City.
I say to people across the country and around the world, if you were planning to come to New York sometime in the future, come here now. Come to enjoy our thousands of restaurants, the museums and sporting events and shopping and Broadway, but also come to take a stand against terrorism.
We need to heed the words of a hymn that I and the police commissioner and the fire commissioner and--have heard over and over again at the many funerals and memorial services that we've gone to in the last week, two weeks. They hymn begins ``Be not afraid.''
Freedom from fear is a basic human right. We need to reassert our right to live free from fear, with greater confidence and determination than ever before. Here in New York City, across America and around the world, with one clear voice, unanimously, we need to say, we will not give in to terrorism.
Surrounded by our friends of every faith, we know this is not a clash of civilizations. It's a conflict between murderers and humanity. This is not a question of retaliation or revenge, it's a matter of justice leading to peace. The only acceptable result is the complete and total eradication of terrorism.
New Yorkers are strong and they are resilient. We are unified and we will not yield to terror. We do not let fear make our decisions for us. We choose to live in freedom.

Thank you and God bless you.

Tuesday, April 19, 2011

Lou Gehrig's Farewell Speech



"Fans, for the past two weeks you have been reading about the bad break I got. Yet today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of this earth. I have been in ballparks for seventeen years and have never received anything but kindness and encouragement from you fans.

"Look at these grand men. Which of you wouldn't consider it the highlight of his career just to associate with them for even one day? Sure, I'm lucky. Who wouldn't consider it an honor to have known Jacob Ruppert? Also, the builder of baseball's greatest empire, Ed Barrow? To have spent six years with that wonderful little fellow, Miller Huggins? Then to have spent the next nine years with that outstanding leader, that smart student of psychology, the best manager in baseball today, Joe McCarthy? Sure, I'm lucky.

"When the New York Giants, a team you would give your right arm to beat, and vice versa, sends you a gift - that's something. When everybody down to the groundskeepers and those boys in white coats remember you with trophies - that's something. When you have a wonderful mother-in-law who takes sides with you in squabbles with her own daughter - that's something. When you have a father and a mother who work all their lives so you can have an education and build your body - it's a blessing. When you have a wife who has been a tower of strength and shown more courage than you dreamed existed - that's the finest I know.

"So I close in saying that I may have had a bad break, but I have an awful lot to live for."

Monday, February 28, 2011

Charles F. Buckles













Frank Woodruff Buckles’ life spanned the awesome, horrible, fantastic, dreadful Twentieth Century. He saw and experienced much. As America’s last surviving veteran witness to the First World War, his life experiences and perspective are an artifact in our day which often lacks perspective. Frank’s story, in his own words:



The Beginning


I was born on my father’s farm north of Bethany in Harrison County, Missouri, on 1 February 1901. My father retired in 1905 and bought property in the small town of Coffey, where I started school. In 1910, he bought a farm in Vernon County, near Walker, Missouri, where we enjoyed country living. In December 1916, we moved to Dewey County, Oklahoma, near Oakwood. I was 15 at the time, and I accompanied a boxcar load of draft horses and equipment to the farm. I knew that my father was planning to arrange for a man to take the horses to Oklahoma. He would be paid $20 and transportation back to Missouri. I asked my father if I could do the job, and he agreed. My parents came later by automobile.


In the charming little frontier town of Oakwood, population 300, I worked at the bank, lived at the hotel, and went to high school. On 6 April 1917, the United States entered the Great War and patriotic posters appeared in the post offices.



Enlistment


When summer vacation came, I was invited to the Kansas State Fair in Wichita. While there, I went to the Marine Corps recruiting office to enlist. I said that I was 18, but the understanding sergeant said that I was too young; I had to be 21. I went to Lamed, Kansas, to visit my father’s mother who was living with my aunt and uncle who owned a bank in Larned. A week later, I returned to Wichita and went to the Marine recruiting station. This time I stated that I was 21. The same sergeant gave me a physical examination, but kindly told me that I was just not heavy enough. I tried the Navy and passed the tests, but they were perhaps suspicious of my age and told me that I was flat-footed.


I decided to try elsewhere, so I went to Oklahoma City. There I had no luck with either the Marines or the Navy. I then tried the Army, but was asked for a birth certificate. I told them that the public records were not made of births in Missouri at the time I was born, and my record would be in the family Bible. They accepted this and I enlisted in the Army on 14 August 1917. Thirteen of us were accepted at the recruiting station and given rail tickets to Fort Logan, Colorado, where those who were accepted were sworn into the regular U. S. Army. My serial number was 15577.


In choosing the branch of the Army in which to serve, the old sergeant advised that the Ambulance Service was the quickest way to get to France because the French were begging for ambulance services. I followed his advice and was sent to Fort Riley, Kansas, for training and trench casualty retrieval and ambulance operations.



The Great War


The unit that I went overseas with was called the First Fort Riley Casual Detachment, which consisted of 102 men. The ranking officer was a sergeant. I have a photo of this unit taken at Fort Riley.


We sailed from Hoboken, New Jersey, via Halifax, Nova Scotia, in December 1917, aboard the HMS Carpathia, the vessel famous for the rescue of the White Star Liner, Titanic, on 15 April 1912. Some of the officers and crew who made the rescue were aboard the Carpathia and were not averse to describing the rescue.


We docked in Glasgow, Scotland, and our unit continued on to Winchester, England, to await cross-channel shipment to France. A unit of the 6th Marines was operating Camp Hospital No. 35 near Winchester. Our unit was forced to replace the Marines who were sent on to France.


While in England, I drove a Ford ambulance, a motorcycle with sidecar, and a Ford car for visiting dignitaries. Others walked. After some weeks in England, I requested a meeting with the commanding officer of the area, Colonel Jones of the 6th Cavalry. I asked to be sent to France, and he explained to me that he, too, wanted to go to France but had to stay where he was ordered.


I finally got an assignment to escort an officer to France who had been left behind by his original unit. In France, I had various assignments and was at several locations. After Armistice Day I was assigned to a prisoner-of-war escort company to return prisoners back to Germany.


After two years with the AEF (American Expeditionary Force), I returned home on the USS Pocahontas in January 1920. I was paid $143.90, including a $60 bonus.



Returning Home


I went home to visit my parents, then decided to get a quick education in shorthand and typewriting at a business school in Oklahoma City. After four months of school, I got a job at the post office, working 4:00 p.m. to midnight. I was paid 60¢ an hour. In one month, I had enough money to take the train to Toronto, Ontario, Canada, where I got a job in the freight soliciting office of the White Star Line Steamship Company. I also had a night job with the Great Northwest Telegraph Company.


During the winter of 1921, I went to New York and got a job in the bond department of the prestigious Bankers Trust Company at 5th Avenue and 42nd Street. I used as my reference the Oakwood, Oklahoma, bank where I had worked at age 15.


The steamship business had more appeal for me, but first I had to have some experience at sea. I got my first sea job with the old Munson Line as assistant purser of the ship, Western World, bound for Buenos Aires. I spent several years with the Grace Line, in both cargo and passenger ships on the west coast of South America, where an intimate knowledge of the countries and language was required.



World War II


In 1940, I accepted an assignment to expedite the movement of cargoes for the American President Lines in Manila. Unfortunately for me, my stay was extended by the Japanese invasion of the Philippines in 1941. I spent three-and-a-half years in Japanese prison camps at Santo Tomas and Los Banos. We were rescued by the 11th Airborne Division on 23 February 1945.



Home Again


Life in San Francisco was pleasant after World War II. On 14 September 1946, I married Audrey Mayo of Pleasanton, California. She was born on a ranch, and my people were landowners and farmers for generations, so we decided it was time to give up foreign assignments and come back to the land. We came to Gap View Farm near Charles Town, West Virginia, in January 1954, to reside in the area where my forefather, Robert Buckles, his wife, and 15 other families settled in 1732.


Frank Buckles continued to work on his farm and, up until the age of 106 still drove his tractor. His wife Audrey has passed and Mr. Buckles lived with his daughter, Susannah near Charles Town, West Virginia, until his death at the age of 110.

Thursday, December 30, 2010

Edward Everett's Gettysburg Address

...in 1863, Edward Everett spoke at the dedication of Gettysburg's National Cemetery, giving what is remembered today as the other Gettysburg Address. The Boston orator was the obvious choice for the occasion. During his 40-year career as professor, diplomat, and statesman, he had consistently dazzled audiences with his brilliant oratory. At Gettysburg, Everett held the crowd spellbound for two hours. But his words are not the ones that are remembered from that day. When Abraham Lincoln followed Everett to the podium, the president spoke for only three minutes, but what he said entered the national memory and has remained there ever since. Everett's Gettysburg address lives on, in the words of one historian, "as a foil to that better thing that followed." For his part, Everett was deeply impressed by the concise speech and wrote to Lincoln noting "I should be glad if I could flatter myself that I came as near to the central idea of the occasion, in two hours, as you did in two minutes."

Edward Everett's Gettysburg Address

Standing beneath this serene sky, overlooking these broad fields now reposing from the labors of the waning year, the mighty alleghenies dimly towering before us, the graves of our brethren beneath our feet, it is with hesitation that I raise my poor voice to break the eloquent silence of God and Nature. But the duty to which you have called me must be performed;-grant me, I pray you, your indulgence and your sympathy.

It was appointed by law in Athens, that the obsequies of the citizens who fell in battle should be performed at the public expense, and in the most honorable manner. Their bones were carefully gathered up from the funeral pyre, where their bodies were consumed, and brought home to the city. There, for three days before the interment they lay in state, beneath tents of honor, to receive the votive offerings of friends and relatives,-flowers, weapons, precious ornaments, painted vases, (wonders of art, which after two thousand years adorn the museums of modern Europe,)-the last tributes of surviving affection. Ten coffins of funeral cypress received the honorable deposit, one for each of the tribes of the city, and an eleventh in memory of the unrecognized, but not therefore unhonored, dead, and of those whose remains could not be recovered. On the fourth day the mournful procession was formed; mothers, wives, sisters, daughters led the way, and to them it was permitted by the simplicity of ancient manners to utter aloud their lamentations for the beloved and the lost; the male relatives and friends of the deceased followed; citizens and strangers closed the train. Thus marshalled, they moved to the place of interment in that famous Ceramicus, the most beautiful suburb of Athens, which had been adorned by Cimon, the son of Miltiades, with walks and fountains and columns,--whose groves were filled with altars, shrines, and temples,--whose gardens were kept forever green by the streams from the neighboring hills, and shaded with the trees sacred to Minerva and coeval with the foundation of the city,--whose circuit enclosed the olive Grove of Academe, Platos retirement, where the Attic birdTrilled his thick-warbled note the summer long;
whose pathways gleamed with the monuments of the illustrious dead, the work of the most consummate masters that ever gave life to marble. There, beneath the over-arching plane-trees, upon a lofty stage erected for the purpose, it was ordained that a funeral oration should be pronounced by some citizen of Athens, in the presence of the assembled multitude.
Such were the tokens of respect required to be paid at Athens to the memory of those who had fallen in the cause of their country. For those alone who fell at Marathon a special honor was reserved. As the battle fought upon that immortal field was distinguished from all others in Grecian history for its influence over the fortunes of Hellas,--as it depended upon the event of that day whether Greece should live, a glory and a light to all coming time, or should expire like the meteor of a moment; so the honors awarded to its martyr-heroes were such as were bestowed by Athens on no other occasion. They alone of all her sons were entombed upon the spot which they had forever rendered famous. Their names were inscribed upon ten pillars, erected upon the monumental tumulus which covered their ashes, (where after six hundred years, they were read by the traveler Pausanias,) and although the columns beneath the hand of time and barbaric violence, have long since disappeared, the venerable mound still marks the spot where they fought and fell,--
That battle-field where Persias victim horde First bowed beneath the brunt of Hellas sword.
And shall I, fellow citizens, who, after an interval of twenty-three centuries, a youthful pilgrim from the world unknown to ancient Greece, have wandered over that illustrious plain, ready to put off the shoes from off my feet, as one that stands on holy ground,--who have gazed with respectful emotion on the mound which still protects the dust of those who rolled back the tide of Persian invasion, and rescued the land of popular liberty, of letters, and of arts, from the ruthless foe,--stand unmoved over the graves of our dear brethren, who so lately, on three of those all-important days which decide a nations history,--days on whose issue it depended whether this august republican Union, founded by some of the wisest statesmen that ever lived, cemented with the blood of some of the purest patriots that ever died, should perish or endure,--rolled back the tide of an invasion, not less unprovoked, not less ruthless, than that which came to plant the dark banner of Asiatic despotism and slavery on the free soil of Greece? Heaven forbid! And could I prove so insensible to every prompting of patriotic duty and affection, not only would you, fellow citizens, gathered, many of you from distant States, who have come to take part in these pious offices of gratitude--you, respected fathers, brethren, matrons, sisters, who surround me--cry out for shame, but the forms of brave and patriotic men who fill these honored graves would heave with indignation beneath the sod.We have assembled, friends, fellow citizens, at the invitation of the Executive of the great central State of Pennsylvania, seconded by the Governors of seventeen other loyal States of the Union, to pay the last tribute of respect to the brave men, who, in the hard fought battles of the first, second and third days of July last, laid down their lives for the country on these hill sides and the plains before us, and whose remains have been gathered into the Cemetery which we consecrate this day. As my eye ranges over the fields whose sods were so lately moistened by the blood of gallant and loyal men, I feel, as never before, how truly it was said of old, that it is sweet and becoming to die for ones country. I feel as never before, how justly, from the dawn of history to the present time, men have paid the homage of their gratitude and admiration to the memory of those who nobly sacrificed their lives, that their fellow men may live in safety and in honor. And if this tribute were ever due, when, to whom, could it be more justly paid than to those whose last resting place we this day commend to the blessing of Heaven and of men?
For consider, my friends, what would have been the consequences to the country, to yourselves, and to all you hold dear, if those who sleep beneath our feet, and their gallant comrades who survive to serve their country on other fields of danger, had failed in their duty on those memorable days. Consider what, at this moment, would be the condition of the United States, if that noble Army of the Potomac, instead of gallantly and for the second time beating back the tide of invasion from Maryland and Pennsylvania, had been itself driven from these well contested heights, thrown back in confusion on Baltimore, or trampled down, discomfited, scattered to the four winds. What, in that sad event, would have been the fate of the Monumental city, of Harrisburg, of Philadelphia, of Washington, the capital of the Union, each and every one of which would have lain at the mercy of the enemy, accordingly as it might have pleased him, spurred by passion, flushed with victory, and confident of continued success, to direct his course?
For this we must bear in mind, it is one of the great lessons of the war, indeed of every war, that it is impossible for a people without military organization, inhabiting the cities, towns, and villages of an open country, including, of course, the natural proportion of noncombatants of either sex, and of every age, to withstand the inroad of a veteran army. What defence can be made by the inhabitants of villages mostly built of wood, of cities unprotected by walls, nay, by a population of men, however high-toned and resolute, whose aged parents demand their care, whose wives and children are clustering about them, against the charge of the war-horse whose neck is clothed with thunder--against flying artillery and batteries of rifled cannon planted on every commanding eminence--against the onset of trained veterans led by skilful chiefs? No, my friends, army must be met by army, battery by battery, squadron by squadron; and the shock of organized thousands must be encountered by the firm breasts and valiant arms of other thousands, as well organized and as skilfully led. It is no reproach, therefore, to the unarmed population of the country to say, that we owe it to the brave men who sleep in their beds of honor before us, and to their gallant surviving associates, not merely that your fertile fields, my friends of Pennsylvania and Maryland, were redeemed from the presence of the invader, but that your capitals were not given up to threatened plunder, perhaps laid in ashes, Washington seized by the enemy, and a blow struck at the heart of the nation.
Who that hears me has forgotten the thrill of joy that ran through the country on the 4th of July--auspicious day for the glorious tidings, and rendered still more so by the simultaneous fall of Vicksburg--when the telegraph flashed through the land the assurance from the President of the United States that the army of the Potomac, under General Meade, had again smitten the invader? Sure I am, that with the ascriptions of praise that rose to Heaven from twenty millions of freemen, with the acknowledgments that breathed from patriotic lips throughout the length and breadth of America, to the surviving officers and men who had rendered the country this inestimable service, there beat in every loyal bosom a throb of tender and sorrowful gratitude to the martyrs who had fallen on the sternly contested field. Let a nations fervent thanks make some amends for the toils and sufferings of those who survive. Would that the heartfelt tribute could penetrate these honored graves!In order that we may comprehend, to their full extent, our obligations to the martyrs and surviving heroes of the army of the Potomac, let us contemplate for a few moments the train of events, which culminated in the battles of the first days of July. Of this stupendous rebellion, planned as its originators boast, more than thirty years ago, matured and prepared for during an entire generation, finally commenced because, for the first time since the adoption of the Constitution, an election of President had been effected without the votes of the South, (which retained, however, the control of the two other branches of the governments) the occupation of the national capital, with the seizure of public archives and of the treaties with foreign powers, was an essential feature. This was, in substance, within my personal knowledge, admitted in the winter of 1860-61, by one of the most influential leaders of the rebellion; and it was fondly thought that this object could be effected by a bold and sudden movement on the 4th of March, 1861. There is abundant proof, also, that a darker project was contemplated, if not by the responsible chiefs of the rebellion, yet by nameless ruffians, willing to play a subsidiary and murderous part in the treasonable drama. It was accordingly maintained by the Rebel emissaries in England, in the circles to which they found access, that the new American Minister ought not, when he arrived, to be received as the envoy of the United States, inasmuch as before that time Washington would be captured, and the capital of the nation and the archives and muniments of the government would be in the possession of the Confederates. In full accordance also with this threat, it was declared, by the Rebel Secretary of War, at Montgomery, in the presence of his Chiefs and of his colleagues, and of five thousand hearers, while the tidings of the assault on Sumter were traveling over the wires on that fatal 12th of April, 1861, that before the end of May 'the flag which then flaunted the breeze, as he expressed it, 'would float over the dome of the Capitol at Washington.At the time this threat was made, the rebellion was confined to the cotton-growing States, and it was well understood by them, that the only hope of drawing any of the other slaveholding States into the conspiracy, was in bringing about a conflict of arms, and 'firing the heart of the South by the effusion of blood. This was declared by the Charleston press, to be the object for which Sumter was to be assaulted; and the emissaries sent from Richmond, to urge on the unhallowed work, gave the promise, that, with the first drop of blood that should be shed, Virginia would place herself by the side of South Carolina.
In pursuance of this original plan of the leaders of the rebellion, the capture of Washington has been continually in view, not merely for the sake of its public buildings, as the capital of the Confederacy, but as the necessary preliminary to the absorption of the border States, and for the moral effect in the eyes of Europe of possessing the metropolis of the Union.
I allude to these facts, not perhaps enough borne in mind, as a sufficient refutation of the pretence, on the part of the Rebels, that the war is one of self-defence, waged for the right of self-government. It is in reality, a war originally levied by ambitious men in the cotton-growing States, for the purpose of drawing the slaveholding border States into the vortex of the conspiracy, first by sympathy--which, in the case of South-Eastern Virginia, North Carolina, part of Tennessee and Arkansas, succeeded--and then by force and for the purpose of subjugating Maryland, Western Virginia, Kentucky, Eastern Tennessee and Missouri; and it is a most extraordinary fact, considering the clamors of the Rebel chiefs on the subject of invasion, that not a soldier of the United States has entered the States last named, except to defend their Union-loving inhabitants from the armies and guerillas of the Rebels.
In conformity with these designs on the city of Washington, and notwithstanding the disastrous results of the invasion of 1862, it was determined by the Rebel Government last summer to resume the offensive in that direction. Unable to force the passage of the Rappahannock, where General Hooker, notwithstanding the reverse at Chancellorsville, in May, was strongly posted, the Confederate general resorted to strategy. He had two objects in view. The first was by a rapid movement northward, and by manoeuvring with a portion of his army on the east side of the Blue Ridge, to tempt Hooker from his base of Operations, thus leading him to uncover the approaches to Washington, to throw it open to a raid by Stuarts cavalry, and to enable Lee himself to cross the Potomac in the Neighborhood of Poolesville and thus fall upon the capital. This plan of operations was wholly frustrated. The design of the Rebel general was promptly discovered by General Hooker, and, moving with great rapidity from Fredericksburg, he preserved unbroken the inner line, and stationed the various corps of his army at all the points protecting the approach to Washington, from Centreville up to Leesburg. From this vantage-ground the Rebel general in vain attempted to draw him. In the mean time, by the vigorous operations of Pleasanton's cavalry, the cavalry of Stuart, though greatly superior in numbers, was so crippled as to be disabled from performing the part assigned it in the campaign. In this manner, General Lees first object, namely, the defeat of Hookers army on the south of the Potomac and a direct march on Washington, was baffled.
The second part of the Confederate plan, which is supposed to have been undertaken in opposition to the views of General Lee, was to turn the demonstration northward into a real invasion of Maryland and Pennsylvania, in the hope, that, in this way, General Hooker would be drawn to a distance from the capital, and that some opportunity would occur of taking him at disadvantage, and, after defeating his army, of making a descent upon Baltimore and Washington. This part of General Lees plan, which was substantially the repetition of that of 1862, was not less signally defeated, with what honor to the arms of the Union the heights on which we are this day assembled will forever attest.
Much time had been uselessly consumed by the Rebel general in his unavailing attempts to out-manoeuvre General Hooker. Although General Lee broke up from Fredericksburg on the 3d of June, it was not till the 24th that the main body of his army entered Maryland. Instead of crossing the Potomac, as he had intended, east of the Blue Ridge, he was compelled to do it at Shepherdstown and Williamsport, thus materially deranging his entire plan of campaign north of the river. Stuart, who had been sent with his cavalry to the east of the Blue Ridge, to guard the passes of the mountains, to mask the movements of Lee, and to harass the Union general in crossing the river, having been severely handled by Pleasanton at Beverly Ford, Aldie, and Upperville, instead of being able to retard General Hookers advance, was driven himself away from his connection with the army of Lee, and cut off for a fortnight from all communication with it--a circumstance to which General Lee, in his report, alludes more than once, with evident displeasure. Let us now rapidly glance at the incidents of the eventful campaign.
A detachment from Ewell's corps, under Jenkins, had penetrated, on the 15th of June, as far as Chambersburg. This movement was intended at first merely as a demonstration, and as a marauding expedition for supplies. It had, however, the salutary effect of alarming the country; and vigorous preparations were made, not only by the General Government, but here in Pennsylvania and in the sister States, to repel the inroad. After two days passed at Chambersburg, Jenkins, anxious for his communications with Ewell, fell back with his plunder to Hagerstown. Here he remained for several days, and then having swept the recesses of the Cumberland valley, came down upon the eastern flank of the South mountain, and pushed his marauding parties as far as Waynesboro. On the 22nd, the remainder of Ewell's corps crossed the river and moved up the valley. They were followed on the 24th by Longstreet and Hill, who crossed at Williamsport and Shepherdstown, and pushing up the valley, encamped at Chambersburg on the 27th. In this way the whole rebel army, estimated at 90,000 infantry, upwards of 10,000 cavalry, and 4,000 or 5,000 artillery, making a total of 105,000 of all arms, was concentrated in Pennsylvania.
Up to this time no report of Hookers movements had been received by General Lee, who, having been deprived of his cavalry, had no means of obtaining information. Rightly judging, however, that no time would be lost by the Union army in pursuit, in order to detain it on the eastern side of the mountains in Maryland and Pennsylvania, and thus preserve his communications by the way of Williamsport, he had, before his own arrival at Chambersburg, directed Ewell to send detachments from his corps to Carlisle and York. The latter detachment, under Early, passed through this place on the 26th of June. You need not, fellow citizens of Gettysburg, that I should recall to you those moments of alarm and distress, precursors as they were of the more trying scenes which were so soon to follow.As soon as Gen. Hooker perceived that the advance of the Confederates into Cumberland valley was not a mere feint to draw him away from Washington, he moved rapidly in pursuit. Attempts, as we have seen, were made to harass and retard his passage across the Potomac. These attempts were not only altogether unsuccessful, but were so unskillfully made as to place the entire Federal army between the cavalry of Stuart and the army of Lee. While the latter was massed in the Cumberland valley, Stuart was east of the mountains, with Hookers army between, and Gregg's cavalry in close pursuit. Stuart was accordingly compelled to force a march northward, which was destitute of strategical character, and which deprived his chief of all means of obtaining intelligence.
Not a moment had been lost by General Hooker in the pursuit of Lee. The day after the Rebel army entered Maryland, the Union army crossed the Potomac at Edwards Ferry, and by the 28th of June lay between Harpers Ferry and Frederick. The force of the enemy on that day was partly at Chambersburg, and partly moving on the Cash-town road in the direction of Gettysburg, while the detachments from Ewell's corps, of which mention has been made, had reached the Susquehanna opposite Harrisburg and Columbia. That a great battle must soon be fought, no one could doubt; but in the apparent and perhaps real absence of plan on the part of Lee, it was impossible to foretell the precise scene of the encounter." Wherever fought, consequences the most momentous hung upon the result.In this critical and anxious state of affairs, General Hooker was relieved, and General Meade was summoned to the chief command of the army. It appears to my unmilitary judgment to reflect the highest credit upon him, upon his predecessor, and upon the corps commanders of the army of the Potomac, that a change could take place in the chief command of so large a force on the eve of a general battle--the various corps necessarily moving on lines somewhat divergent, and all in ignorance of the enemy's intended point of concentration--and that not an hours hesitation should ensue in the advance of any portion of the entire army.
Having assumed the chief command on the 28th, General Meade directed his left wing, under Reynolds, upon Emmitsburg, and his right upon New Windsor, leaving General French with 11,000 men to protect the Baltimore and Ohio railroad, and convoy the public property from Harpers Ferry to Washington. Buford's cavalry was then at this place, and Kilpatrick's at Hanover, where he encountered and defeated the rear of Stuart's cavalry, who was roving the country in search of the main army of Lee. On the Rebel side, Hill had reached Fayetteville on the Cashtown road on the 28th, and was followed on the same road by Longstreet on the 29th. The eastern side of the mountain, as seen from Gettysburg, was lighted up at night by the camp-fires of the enemy's advance, and the country swarmed with his foraging parties. It was now too evident to be questioned, that the thunder-cloud, so long gathering blackness, would soon burst on some part of the devoted vicinity of Gettysburg.
The 30th of June was a day of important preparation. At half-past eleven o'clock in the morning, General Buford passed through Gettysburg, upon a reconnaissance in force, with his cavalry, upon the Chambersburg road. The information obtained by him was immediately communicated to General Reynolds, who was, in consequence. directed to occupy Gettysburg. That gallant officer accordingly, with the First Corps, marched from Emmitsburg to within six or seven miles of this place, and encamped on the right bank of Marsh's creek. Our right wing, meantime, was moved to Manchester. On the same day the corps of Hill and Longstreet were pushed still further forward on the Chambersburg road, and distributed in the vicinity of Marsh's creek, while a reconnaissance was made by the Confederate General Pettigrew up to a very short distance from this place.--Thus at nightfall, on the 30th of June, the greater part of the Rebel force was concentrated in the immediate vicinity of two corps of the Union army, the former refreshed by two days passed in comparative repose and deliberate preparation for the encounter, the latter separated by a march of one or two days from their supporting corps, and doubtful at what precise point they were to expect an attack.And now the momentous day, a day to be forever remembered in the annals of the country, arrived. Early in the morning, on the 1st of July, the conflict began. I need not say that it would be impossible for me to comprise, within the limits of the hour, such a narrative as would do anything like full justice to the all-important events of these three great days, or to the merit of the brave officers and men, of every rank, of every arm of the service, and of every loyal State, who bore their part in the tremendous struggle--alike those who nobly sacrificed their lives for their country, and those who survive, many of them scarred with honorable wounds, the objects of our admiration and gratitude. The astonishingly minute, accurate, and graphic accounts contained in the journals of the day, prepared from personal observation by reporters who witnessed the scenes, and often shared the perils which they describe, and the highly valuable "notes" of Professor Jacobs, of the University in this place, to which I am greatly indebted, will abundantly supply the deficiency of my necessarily too condensed statement.
General Reynolds, on arriving at Gettysburg, in the morning of the 1st, found Buford with his cavalry warmly engaged with the enemy, whom beheld most gallantly in check. Hastening himself to the front, General Reynolds directed his men to be moved over the fields from the Emmitsburg road, in front of M'Millan's and Dr. Schinucker's, under cover of the Seminary Ridge. Without a moments hesitation, he attacked the enemy, at the same time sending orders to the Eleventh Corps (General Howard's) to advance as promptly as possible. General Reynolds immediately found himself engaged with a force which greatly outnumbered his own, and had scarcely made his dispositions for the action when he fell, mortally wounded, at the head of his advance. The command of the First Corps devolved on General Doubleday, and that of the field on General Howard, who arrived at 11:30, with Schurz's and Barlow's divisions of the Eleventh Corps, the latter of whom received a severe wound. Thus strengthened, the advantage of the battle was for some time on our side. The attacks of the Rebels were vigorously repulsed by Wadsworth's division of the First Corps, and a large number of prisoners, including General Archer, were captured. At length, however, the continued reinforcement of the Confederates from the main body in the neighborhood, and by the divisions of Rodes and Early, coming down by separate lines from Heidlersberg and taking post on our extreme right, turned the fortunes of the day. Our army, after contesting the ground for five hours, was obliged to yield to the enemy, whose force outnumbered them two to one; and toward the close of the afternoon General Howard deemed it prudent to withdraw the two corps to the heights where we are now assembled. The great part of the First Corps passed through the outskirts of the town, and reached the hill without serious loss or molestation. The Eleventh Corps and portions of the First, not being aware that the enemy had already entered the town from the north, attempted to force their way through Washington and Baltimore streets, which, in the crowd and confusion of the scene, they did with a heavy loss in prisoners.
General Howard was not unprepared for this turn in the fortunes of the day. He had, in the course of the morning, caused Cemetery Hill to be occupied by General Steinwehr, with the second division of the Eleventh Corps. About the time 0f the withdrawal of our troops to the hill, General Hancock arrived, having been sent by General Meade, on hearing of the death of Reynolds, to assume the command of the field till he himself could reach the front. In conjunction with General Howard, General Hancock immediately proceeded to post troops and to repel an attack on our right flank. This attack was feebly made and promptly repulsed. At nightfall, our troops on the hill, who had so gallantly sustained themselves during the toil and peril of the day, were cheered by the arrival of General Slocum with the Twelfth Corps and of General Sickles with a part of the Third.
Such was the fortune of the first day, commencing with decided success to our arms, followed by a check, but ending in the occupation of this all-important position. To you, fellow citizens of Gettysburg, I need not attempt to portray the anxieties of the ensuing night. Witnessing, as you had done with sorrow, the withdrawal of our army through your streets, with a considerable loss of prisoners--mourning as you did over the brave men who had fallen--shocked with the wide-spread desolation around you, of which the wanton burning of the Harman House had given the signal--ignorant of the near approach of General Meade, you passed the weary hours of the night in painful expectation.
Long before the dawn of the 2d of July, the new Commander-in-Chief had reached the ever-memorable field of service and glory. Having received intelligence of the events in progress, and informed by the reports of Generals Hancock and Howard of the favorable character of the positions, he determined to give battle to the enemy at this point. He accordingly directed the remaining corps of the army to concentrate at Gettysburg with all possible expedition, and breaking up his headquarters at Taneytown at ten p.m., he arrived at the front at one o'clock in the morning of the 2d of July. Few were the moments given to sleep, during the rapid watches of that brief midsummer's night, by officers or men, though half of our troops were exhausted by the conflict of the day and the residue wearied by the forced marches which had brought them to the rescue. The full moon, veiled by thin clouds, shone down that night on a strangely unwonted scene. The silence of the grave-yard was broken by the heavy tramp of armed men, by the neigh of the war-horse, the harsh rattle of the wheels of artillery hurrying to their stations, and all the indescribable tumult of preparation. The various corps of the army, as they arrived, were moved to their positions, on the spot where we are assembled and the ridges that extend south-east and south-west; batteries were planted and breastworks thrown up. The Second and Fifth Corps, with the rest of the Third, had reached the ground by seven o'clock, a.m.; but it was not till two o'clock in the afternoon that Sedgwick arrived with the Sixth Corps. He had marched thirty-four miles since nine o'clock on the evening before. It was only on his arrival that the Union army approached in equality of numbers with that of the Rebels, who were posted upon the opposite and parallel ridge, distant from a mile to a mile and a half, overlapping our position on either wing, and probably exceeding by ten thousand the army of General Meade.
And here I cannot but remark on the providential inaction of the Rebel army." Had the contest been renewed by it at daylight on the 2d of July, with the First and Eleventh Corps exhausted by the battle and the retreat, the Third and Twelfth weary from their forced march, and the Second, Fifth and Sixth not yet arrived, nothing but a miracle could have saved the army from a great disaster. Instead of this, the day dawned, the sun rose, the cool hours of the morning passed, the forenoon and a considerable part of the afternoon wore away, without the slightest aggressive movement on the part of the enemy. Thus time was given for half of our forces to arrive and take their places in the lines, while the rest of the army enjoyed a much needed half days repose.
At length, between three and four o'clock in the afternoon, the work of death began. A signal gun from the hostile batteries was followed by a tremendous cannonade along the Rebel lines, and this by a heavy advance of infantry, brigade after brigade, commencing on the enemy's right against the left of our army, and so onward to the left center. A forward movement of General Sickles, to gain a commanding position from which to repel the Rebel attack, drew upon him a destructive fire from the enemy's batteries, and a furious assault from Longstreet's and Hills advancing troops. After a brave resistance on the part of his corps, he was forced back, himself falling severely wounded. This was the critical moment of the second day, but the Fifth and part of the Sixth Corps, with portions of the First and Second, were promptly brought to the support of the Third. The struggle was fierce and murderous, but by sunset our success was decisive, and the enemy was driven back in confusion. The most important service was rendered towards the close of the day, in the memorable advance between Round Top and Little Round Top, by General Crawford's division of the Fifth Corps, consisting of two brigades of the Pennsylvania Reserves, of which one company was from this town and neighborhood. The Rebel force was driven back with great loss in killed and prisoners. At eight o'clock in the evening a desperate attempt was made by the enemy to storm the position of the Eleventh Corps on Cemetery Hill; but here, too, after a terrible conflict, he was repulsed with immense loss. Ewell, on our extreme right, which had been weakened by the withdrawal of the troops sent over to support our left, had succeeded in gaining a foothold within a portion of our lines, near Spangler's spring. This was the only advantage obtained by the rebels to compensate them for the disasters of the day, and of this, as we shall see, they were soon deprived.
Such was the result of the second act of this eventful drama,--a day hard fought, and at one moment anxious, but, with the exception of the slight reverse just named, crowned with dearly earned but uniform success to our arms, auspicious of a glorious termination of the final struggle. On these good omens the night fell.In the course of the night, General Geary returned to his position on the right, from which he had hastened the day before to strengthen the Third Corps. He immediately engaged the enemy, and after a sharp and decisive action, drove them out of our lines, recovering the ground which had been lost on the preceding day. A spirited contest was kept up all the morning on this part of the line; but General Geary, reinforced by Wheaton's brigade of the Sixth Corps, maintained his position, and inflicted very severe losses on the Rebels.
Such was the cheering commencement of the third days work, and with it ended all serious attempts of the enemy on our right. As on the preceding day, his efforts were now mainly directed against our left centre and left wing. From eleven till half-past one o'clock, all was still--a solemn pause of preparation, as if both armies were nerving themselves for the supreme effort. At length the awful silence, more terrible than the wildest tumult of battle, was broken by the roar of two hundred and fifty pieces of artillery from the opposite ridges, joining in a cannonade of unsurpassed violence--the Rebel batteries along two thirds of their line pouring their fire upon Cemetery Hill, and the centre and left wing of our army. Having attempted in this way for two hours, but without success, to shake the steadiness of our lines, the enemy rallied his forces for a last grand assault. Their attack was principally directed against the position of our Second Corps. Successive lines of Rebel infantry moved forward with equal spirit and steadiness from their cover on the wooded crest of Seminary Ridge, crossing the intervening plain, and, supported right and left by their choicest brigades, charged furiously up to our batteries. Our own brave troops of the Second Corps, supported by Doubleday's division and Stannard's brigade of the First, received the shock with firmness; the ground on both sides was long and fiercely contested, and was covered with the killed and the wounded; the tide of battle flowed and ebbed across the plain, till, after 'a determined and gallant struggle, as it is pronounced by General Lee, the Rebel advance, consisting of two-thirds of Hills corps and the whole of Longstreet's--including Picketts division, the elite of his corps, which had not yet been under fire, and was now depended upon to decide the fortune of this last eventful day--was driven back with prodigious slaughter, discomfited and bro. ken. While these events were in progress at our left centre, the enemy was driven, with a considerable loss of prisoners, from a strong position on our extreme left, from which he was annoying our force on Little Round Top. In the terrific assault on our centre, Generals Hancock and Gibbon were wounded. In the Rebel army, Generals Armistead, Kemper, Pettigrew and Trimble were wounded, the first named mortally, the latter also made prisoner, General Garnett was killed, and thirty-five hundred officers and men made prisoners.These were the expiring agonies of the three days conflict, and with them the battle ceased. It was fought by the Union army with courage and skill, from the first cavalry skirmish on Wednesday morning to the fearful rout of the enemy on Friday afternoon, by every arm and every rank of service, by officers and men, by cavalry, artillery, and infantry. The superiority of numbers was with the enemy, who were led by the ablest commanders in their service; and if the Union force had the advantage of a strong position, the Confederates had that of choosing time and place, the prestige of former victories over the army of the Potomac, and of the success of the first day. Victory does not always fall to the lot of those who deserve it; but that so decisive a triumph, under circumstances like these, was gained by our troops, I would ascribe, under Providence, to the spirit of exalted patriotism that animated them, and the consciousness that they were fighting in a righteous cause.All hope of defeating our army, and securing what General Lee calls 'the valuable results of such an achievement, having vanished, he thought only of rescuing from destruction the remains of his shattered forces. In killed, wounded and missing, he had, as far as can be ascertained, suffered a loss of about 37,000 men--rather more than a third of the army with which he is supposed to have marched into Pennsylvania. Perceiving that his only safety was in rapid retreat, he commenced withdrawing his troops at daybreak on the 4th, throwing up field works in front of our left, which, assuming the appearance of a new position, were intended probably to protect the rear of his army in retreat. That day--sad celebration of the 4th of July for an army of Americans--was passed by him in hurrying off his trains. By nightfall, the main army was in full retreat upon the Cashtown and Fairfield roads, and it moved with such precipitation, that, short as the nights were, by day-light the following morning, notwithstanding a heavy rain, the rear guard had left its position. The struggle of the last two days resembled, in many respects, the battle of Waterloo; and if, in the evening of the third day, General Meade, like the Duke of Wellington, had had the assistance of a powerful auxiliary army to take up the pursuit, the rout of the Rebels would have been as complete as that of Napoleon.
Owing to the circumstances just named, the intentions of the enemy were not apparent on the 4th. The moment his retreat was discovered, the following morning, he was pursued by our cavalry on the Cashtown road and through the Emmitsburg and Monterey passes, and by Sedgwicks corps on the Fairfield road. His rear guard was briskly attacked at Fairfield; a great number of wagons and ambulances were captured in the passes of the mountains; the country swarmed with his stragglers, and his wounded were literally emptied from the vehicles containing them into the farm houses on the road. General Lee, in his report, makes repeated mention of the Union prisoners whom he conveyed into Virginia, somewhat overstating their number. He states, also, that 'such of his wounded as were in a condition to be removed were forwarded to Williamsport. He does not mention that the number of his wounded not removed, and left to the Christian care of the victors, was 7,540, not one of whom failed of any attention which it was possible, under the circumstances of the case, to afford them, not one of whom, certainly, has been put upon Libby prison fare--lingering death by starvation. Heaven forbid, however, that we should claim any merit for the exercise of common humanity.Under the protection of the mountain ridge, whose narrow passes are easily held even by a retreating army, General Lee reached Williamsport in safety, and took up a strong position opposite to that place. General Meade necessarily pursued with the main army by a Hank movement through Middletown, Turners Pass having been secured by General French. Passing through the South mountain, the Union army came up with that of the Rebels on the 12th, and found it securely posted on the heights of Marsh run. The position was reconnoitred, and preparations made for an attack on the 13th. The depth of the river, swollen by the recent rains, authorized the expectation that the enemy would be brought to a general engagement the following day. An advance was accordingly made by General Meade on the morning of the 14th; but it was soon found that the Rebels had escaped in the night, with such haste that Ewell's corps forded the river where the water was breast-high. The cavalry, which had rendered the most important services during the three days, and in harassing the enemy's retreat, was now sent in pursuit, and captured two guns and a large number of prisoners. In an action which took place at Falling Waters, General Pettigrew was mortally wounded. General Meade, in further pursuit of the Rebels, crossed the Potomac at Berlin. Thus again covering the approaches to Washington, he compelled the enemy to pass the Blue Ridge at one of the upper gaps; and in about six weeks from the commencement of the campaign, General Lee found himself on the south side of the Rappahannock, with the probable loss of about a third part of his army.
Such, most inadequately recounted, is the history of the ever memorable three days, and of the events immediately preceding and following. It has been pretended, in order to diminish the magnitude of this disaster to the Rebel cause, that it was merely the repulse of an attack on a strongly defended position. The tremendous losses on both sides are a sufficient answer to this misrepresentation, and attest the courage and obstinacy with which the three days battle was waged. Few of the great conflicts of modern times have cost victors and vanquished so great a sacrifice. On the Union side there fell, in the whole campaign, of generals killed, Reynolds, Weed and Zook, and wounded, Barlow, Barnes, Butterfield, Doubleday, Gibbon, Graham, Hancock, Sickles and Warren; while of officers below the rank of General, and men, there were 2,834 killed, 13,709 wounded, and 6,643 missing. On the Confederate side, there were killed on the field or mortally wounded, Generals Armistead, Barksdale, Garnett, Fender, Pettigrew and Semmes, and wounded, Heth, Hood, Johnson, Kemper, Kimball and Trimble. Of officers below the rank of general, and men, there were taken prisoners, including the wounded, 13,621, an amount ascertained officially. Of the wounded in a condition to be removed, of the killed and the missing, the enemy has made no report. They are estimated, from the best data which the nature of the case admits, at 23,000. General Meade also captured 3 cannon, and 41 standards; and 24,978 small arms were collected on the battle-field.
I must leave to others, who can do it from personal observation, to describe the mournful spectacle presented by these hill-sides and plains at the close of the terrible conflict. It was a saying of the Duke of Wellington, that next to a defeat, the saddest thing was a victory. The horrors of the battlefield, after the contest is over, the sights and sounds of woe,--let me throw a pall over the scene, which no words can adequately depict to those who have not witnessed it, on which no one who has witnessed it, and who has a heart in his bosom, can bear to dwell. One drop of balm alone, one drop of heavenly, life-giving balm, mingles in this bitter cup of misery. Scarcely has the cannon ceased to roar, when the brethren and sisters of Christian benevolence, ministers of compassion, angels of pity, hasten to the field and the hospital, to moisten the parched tongue, to bind the ghastly wounds, to soothe the parting agonies alike of friend and foe, and to catch the last whispered messages of love from dying lips. 'Carry this miniature back to my dear wife, but do not take it from my bosom till I am gone.' 'Tell my little sister not to grieve for me; I am willing to die for my country.' 'Oh, that my mother were here!' When, since Aaron stood between the living and the dead, was there ever so gracious a ministry as this? It has been said that it is characteristic of Americans to treat women with a deference not paid to them in any other country. I will not undertake to say whether this is so; but I will say, that, since this terrible war has been waged, the women of the loyal States, if never before, have entitled themselves to our highest admiration and gratitude,--alike those who at home, often with fingers unused to the toil, often bowed beneath their own domestic cares, have performed an amount of daily labor not exceeded by those who work for their daily bread, and those who, in the hospital and the tents of the Sanitary and Christian Commissions, have rendered services which millions could not buy. Happily, the labor and the service are their own reward. Thousands of matrons and thousands of maidens have experienced a delight in these homely toils and services, compared with which the pleasures of the ball room and the opera house are tame and unsatisfactory. This, on earth, is reward enough, but a richer is in store for them. Yes, brothers, sisters of charity, while you bind up the wounds of the poor sufferers--the humblest, perhaps, that have shed their blood for the country,--forget not Who it is that will hereafter say to you, 'Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.'
And now, friends, fellow citizens, as we stand among these honored graves, the momentous question presents itself: Which of the two parties to the war is responsible for all this suffering, for this dreadful sacrifice of life, the lawful and constitutional government of the United States, or the ambitious men who have rebelled against it? I say 'rebelled' against it, although Earl Russell, the British Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, in his recent temperate and conciliatory speech in Scotland, seems to intimate that no prejudice ought to attach to that word, inasmuch as our English forefathers rebelled against Charles I. and James II., and our American fathers rebelled against George III. These, certainly, are venerable precedents, but they prove only that it is just and proper to rebel against oppressive governments. They do not prove that it was just and proper for the son of James II. to rebel against George I., or his grandson Charles Edward to rebel against George II.; nor, as it seems to me, ought these dynastic struggles, little better than family quarrels, to be compared with this monstrous conspiracy against the American Union. These precedents do not prove that it was just and proper for the 'disappointed great men of the cotton-growing States to rebel against 'the most beneficent government of which history gives us any account, as the Vice President of the Confederacy, in November, 1860, charged them with doing. They do not create a presumption even in favor of the disloyal slaveholders of the South, who, living under a government of which Mr. Jefferson Davis, in the session of 1860-61, said that it 'was the best government ever instituted by man, unexceptionably administered, and under which the people have been prosperous beyond comparison with any other people whose career has been recorded in history,' rebelled against it because their aspiring politicians, himself among the rest, were in danger of losing their monopoly of its offices. What would have been thought by an impartial posterity of the American rebellion against George III., if the colonists had at all times been more than equally represented in parliament, and James Otis, and Patrick Henry, and Washington, and Franklin, and the Adamses, and Hancock, and Jefferson, and men of their stamp, had for two generations enjoyed the confidence of the sovereign and administered the government of the empire? What would have been thought of the rebellion against Charles I., if Cromwell, and the men of his school, had been the responsible advisers of that prince from his accession to the throne, and then, on account of a partial change in the ministry, had brought his head to the block, and involved the country in a desolating war, for the sake of dismembering it and establishing a new government south of the Trent? What would have been thought of the Whigs of 1688, if they had themselves composed the cabinet of James II., and been the advisers of the measures and the promoters of the policy which drove him into exile? The Puritans of 1640, and the Whigs of 1688, rebelled against arbitrary power in order to establish constitutional liberty. If they had risen against Charles and James because those monarchs favored equal rights, and in order themselves, 'for the first time in the history of the world, to establish an oligarchy 'founded on the corner-stone of slavery, they would truly have furnished a precedent for the Rebels of the South, but their cause would not have been sustained by the eloquence of Pym, or of Somers, nor sealed with the blood of Hampden or Russell.
I call the war which the Confederates are waging against the Union a 'rebellion,' because it is one, and in grave matters it is best to call things by their right names. I speak of it as a crime, because the Constitution of the United States so regards it, and puts 'rebellion' on a par with 'invasion.' The Constitution and law not only of England, but of every civilized country, regard them in the same light; or rather they consider the rebel in arms as far worse than the alien enemy. To levy war against the United States is the constitutional definition of treason, and that crime is by every civilized government regarded as the highest which citizen or subject can commit. Not content with the sanctions of human justice, of all the crimes against the law of the land it is singled out for the denunciations of religion. The litanies of every church in Christendom whose ritual embraces that office, as far as I am aware, from the metropolitan cathedrals of Europe to the humblest missionary chapel in the islands of the sea, concur with the Church of England in imploring the Sovereign of the Universe, by the most awful adjurations which the heart of man can conceive or his tongue utter, to deliver us from 'sedition, privy conspiracy and rebellion.' And reason good; for while a rebellion against tyranny--a rebellion designed, after prostrating arbitrary power, to establish free government on the basis of justice and truth--is an enterprise on which good men and angels may look with complacency, an unprovoked rebellion of ambitious men against a beneficent government, for the purpose--the avowed purpose--of establishing, extending and perpetuating any form of injustice and wrong, is an imitation on earth of that first foul revolt of 'the Infernal Serpent,' against which the Supreme Majesty sent forth the armed myriads of his angels, and clothed the right arm of his Son with the three-bolted thunders of omnipotence.
Lord Bacon, in 'the true marshalling of the sovereign degrees of honor, assigns the first place to 'the Conditores Jinperiorum, founders of States and Commonwealths; and, truly, to build up from the discordant elements of our nature, the passions, the interests and the opinions of the individual man, the rivalries of family, clan and tribe, the influences of climate and geographical position, the accidents of peace and war accumulated for ages--to build up from these oftentimes warring elements a well-compacted, prosperous and powerful State, if it were to be accomplished by one effort or in one generation, would require a more than mortal skill. To contribute in some notable degree to this, the greatest work of man, by wise and patriotic counsel in peace and loyal heroism in war, is as high as human merit can well rise, and far more than to any of those to whom Bacon assigns this highest place of honor, whose names can hardly be repeated without a wondering smile--Romulus, Cyrus, Caesar, Ottoman, Ismael--is it due to our Washington, as the founder of the American Union. But if to achieve or help to achieve this greatest work of mans wisdom and virtue gives title to a place among the chief benefactors, rightful heirs of the benedictions, of mankind, by equal reason shall the bold, bad men who seek to undo the noble work, Eversores Irnperiorum, destroyers of States, who for base and selfish ends rebel against beneficent governments, seek to overturn wise constitutions, to lay powerful republican Unions at the foot of foreign thrones, to bring on civil and foreign war, anarchy at home, dictation abroad, desolation, ruin--by equal reason, I say, yes, a thousandfold stronger shall they inherit the execrations of the ages.
But to hide the deformity of the crime under the cloak of that sophistry which strives to make the worse appear the better reason, we are told by the leaders of the Rebellion that in our complex system of government the separate States are 'sovereigns, and that the central power is only an 'agency established by these sovereigns to manage certain little affairs--such, forsooth, as Peace, War, Army, Navy, Finance, Territory, and Relations with the native tribes--which they could not so conveniently administer themselves. It happens, unfortunately for this theory, that the Federal Constitution (which has been adopted by the people of every State of the Union as much as their own State constitutions have been adopted, and is declared to be paramount to them) nowhere recognizes the States as 'sovereigns'--in fact, that, by their names, it does not recognize them at all; while the authority established by that instrument is recognized, in its text, not as an 'agency,' but as 'the Government of the United States.' By that Constitution, moreover, which purports in its preamble to be ordained and established by 'the People of the United States,' it is expressly provided, that 'the members of the State legislatures, and all executive and judicial officers, shall be bound by oath or affirmation to support the Constitution.' Now it is a common thing, under all governments, for an agent to be bound by oath to be faithful to his sovereign; but I never heard before of sovereigns being bound by oath to be faithful to their agency.
Certainly I do not deny that the separate States are clothed with sovereign powers for the administration of local affairs. It is one of the most beautiful features of our mixed system of government; but it is equally true, that, in adopting the Federal Constitution, the States abdicated, by express renunciation, all the most important functions of national sovereignty, and, by one comprehensive, self-denying clause, gave up all right to contravene the Constitution of the United States. Specifically, and by enumeration, they renounced all the most important prerogatives of independent States for peace and for war,--the right to keep troops or ships of war in time of peace, or to engage in war unless actually invaded; to enter into compact with another State or a foreign power; to lay any duty on tonnage, or any impost on exports or imports, without the consent of Congress; to enter into any treaty, alliance, or confederation; to grant letters of marque and reprisal, and to emit bills of credit--while all these powers and many others are expressly vested in the General Government. To ascribe to political communities, thus limited in their jurisdiction--who cannot even establish a post office on their own soil--the character of independent sovereignty, and to reduce a national organization, clothed with all the transcendent powers of government, to the name and condition of an 'agency' of the States, proves nothing but that the logic of secession is on a par with its loyalty and patriotism.
Oh, but 'the reserved rights!' and what of the reserved rights? The tenth amendment of the Constitution, supposed to provide for 'reserved rights,' is constantly misquoted. By that amendment, 'the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.' The 'powers reserved must of course be such as could have been, but were not delegated to the United States,--could have been, but were not prohibited to the States; but to speak of the right of an individual State to secede, as a power that could have been, though it was not delegated to the United States, is simple nonsense.
But waiving this obvious absurdity, can it need a serious argument to prove that there can be no State right to enter into a new confederation reserved under a constitution which expressly prohibits a State to 'enter into any treaty, alliance, or confederation,' or any 'agreement or compact with another State or a foreign power?' To say that the State may, by enacting the preliminary farce of secession, acquire the right to do the prohibited things--to say, for instance, that though the States, in forming the Constitution, delegated to the United States and prohibited to themselves the power of declaring war, there was by implication reserved to each State the right of seceding and then declaring war; that, though they expressly prohibited to the States and delegated to the United States the entire treaty-making power, they reserved by implication (for an express reservation is not pretended) to the individual States, to Florida, for instance, the right to secede, and then to make a treaty with Spain retroceding that Spanish colony, and thus surrendering to a foreign power the key to the Gulf of Mexico,--to maintain propositions like these, with whatever affected seriousness it is done, appears to me egregious trifling.
Pardon me, my friends, for dwelling on these wretched sophistries. But it is these which conducted the armed hosts of rebellion to your doors on the terrible and glorious days of July, and which have brought upon the whole land the scourge of an aggressive and wicked war--a war which can have no other termination compatible with the permanent safety and welfare of the country but the complete destruction of the military power of the enemy. I have, on other occasions, attempted to show that to yield to his demands and acknowledge his independence, thus resolving the Union at once into two hostile governments, with a certainty of further disintegration, would annihilate the strength and the influence of the country as a member of the family of nations; afford to foreign powers the opportunity and the temptation for humiliating and disastrous interference in our affairs; wrest from the Middle and Western States some of their great natural outlets to the sea and of their most important lines of internal communication; deprive the commerce and navigation of the country of two-thirds of our sea coast and of the fortresses which protect it; not only so, but would enable each individual State--some of them with a white population equal to a good sized Northern county--or rather the dominant party in each State, to cede its territory, its harbors, its fortresses, the mouths of its rivers to any foreign power. It cannot be that the people of the loyal States--that, twenty-two millions of brave and prosperous freemen--will, for the temptation of a brief truce in an eternal border war, consent to this hideous national suicide.Do not think that I exaggerate the consequences of yielding to the demands of the leaders of the rebellion. I understate them. They require of us not only all the sacrifices I have named, not only the cession to them, a foreign and hostile power, of all the territory of the United States at present occupied by the Rebel forces, but the abandonment to them of the vast regions we have rescued from their grasp--of Maryland, of a part of Eastern Virginia and the whole of Western Virginia; the sea coast of North and South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida; Kentucky, Tennessee, and Missouri; Arkansas, and the larger portion of Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas--in most of which, with the exception of lawless guerillas, there is not a Rebel in arms, in all of which the great majority of the people are loyal to the Union. We must give back, too, the helpless colored population, thousands of whom are perilling their lives in the ranks of our armies, to a bondage rendered ten-fold more bitter by the momentary enjoyment of freedom. Finally we must surrender every man in the Southern country, white or black, who has moved a finger or spoken a word for the restoration of the Union, to a reign of terror as remorseless as that of Robespierre, which has been the chief instrument by which the Rebellion has been organized and sustained, and which has already filled the prisons of the South with noble men, whose only crime is that they are not the worst of criminals. The South is full of such men. I do not believe there has been a day since the election of President Lincoln, when, if an ordinance of secession could have been fairly submitted, after a free discussion, to the mass of the people in any single Southern State, a majority of ballots would have been given in its favor. No, not in South Carolina. It is not possible that the majority of the people, even of that State, if permitted, without fear or favor, to give a ballot on tile question, would have abandoned a leader like [James L.] Petigru, and all the memories of the Gadsdens, the Rutledges, and the Cotesworth Pinckneys of the revolutionary and constitutional age, to follow the agitators of the present day.
Nor must we be deterred from the vigorous prosecution of the war by the suggestion, continually thrown out by the Rebels and those who sympathize with them, that, however it might have been at an earlier stage, there has been engendered by the operations of the war a state of exasperation and bitterness which, independent of all reference to the original nature of the matters in controversy, will forever prevent the restoration of the Union, and the return of harmony between the two great sections of the country. This opinion I take to be entirely without foundation.
No man can deplore more than I do the miseries of every kind unavoidably incident to war. Who could stand on this spot and call to mind the scenes of the first days of July with any other feeling? A sad foreboding of what would ensue, if war should break out between North and South, has haunted me through life, and led me, perhaps too long, to tread in the path of hopeless compromise, in the fond endeavor to conciliate those who were predetermined not to be conciliated. But it is not true, as is pretended by the Rebels and their sympathizers, that the war has been carried on by the United States without entire regard to those temperaments which are enjoined by the law of nations, by our modern civilization, and by the spirit of Christianity. It would be quite easy to point out, in the recent military history of the leading European powers, acts of violence and cruelty, in the prosecution of their wars, to which no parallel can be found among us. In fact, when we consider the peculiar bitterness with which civil wars are almost invariably waged, we may justly boast of the manner in which the United States have carried on the contest. It is of course impossible to prevent the lawless acts of stragglers and deserters, or the occasional unwarrantable proceedings of subordinates on distant stations; but I do not believe there is, in all history, the record of a civil war of such gigantic dimensions where so little has been done in the spirit of vindictiveness as in this war, by the Government and commanders of the United States; and this notwithstanding the provocation given by the Rebel Government by assuming the responsibility of wretches like Quantrell [sic], refusing to quarter colored troops and scourging and selling into slavery free colored men from the North who fall into their hands, by covering the sea with pirates, refusing a just exchange of prisoners, while they crowd their armies with paroled prisoners not exchanged, and starving prisoners of war to death.In the next place, if there are any present who believe that, in addition to the effect of the military operations of the war, the confiscation acts and emancipation proclamations have embittered the Rebels beyond the possibility of reconciliation, I would request them to reflect that the tone of the Rebel leaders and Rebel press was just as bitter in the first months of the war, nay, before a gun was fired, as it is now. There were speeches made in Congress in the very last session before the outbreak of the Rebellion, so ferocious as to show that their authors were under the influence of a real frenzy. At the present day, if there is any discrimination made by the Confederate press in the affected scorn, hatred and contumely with which every shade of opinion and sentiment in the loyal States is treated, the bitterest contempt is bestowed upon those at the North who still speak the language of compromise, and who condemn those measures of the administration which are alleged to have rendered the return of peace hopeless.
No, my friends, that gracious Providence which over-rules all things for the best 'from seeming evil still educing good,' has so constituted our natures, that the violent excitement of the passions in one direction is generally followed by a reaction in an opposite direction, and the sooner for the violence. If it were not so--if injuries inflicted and retaliated of necessity led to new retaliations, with forever accumulating compound interest of revenge, then the world, thousands of years ago, would have been turned into an earthly hell, and the nations of the earth would have been resolved into clans of furies and demons, each forever warring with his neighbor. But it is not so; all history teaches a different lesson. The Wars of the Roses in England lasted an entire generation, from the battle of St. Albans in 1455 to that of Bosworth Field in 1485. Speaking of the former, Hume says; 'This was the first blood spilt in that fatal quarrel, which was not finished in less than a course of thirty years; which was signalized by twelve pitched battles; which opened a scene of extraordinary fierceness and cruelty; is computed to have cost the lives of eighty princes of the blood; and almost entirely annihilated the ancient nobility of England. The strong attachments which, at that time, men of the same kindred bore to each other, and the vindictive spirit which was considered a point of honor, rendered the great families implacable in their resentment, and widened every moment the breach between the parties.' Such was the state of things in England under which an entire generation grew up; but when Henry VII., in whom the titles of the two Houses were united, went up to London after the battle of Bosworth Field, to mount the throne, he was everywhere received with joyous acclamations, 'as one ordained and sent from heaven to put an end to the dissensions' which bad so long afflicted the country.
The great rebellion of England of the seventeenth century, after long and angry premonitions, may be said to have begun with the calling of the Long Parliament in 1640--and to have ended with the return of Charles II., in l660----twenty years of discord, conflict and civil war; of confiscation, plunder, havoc; a proud hereditary peerage trampled in the dust; a national church overturned, its clergy beggared, its most eminent prelate put to death; a military despotism established on the ruins of a monarchy which had subsisted seven hundred years, and the legitimate sovereign brought to the block; the great families which adhered to the king proscribed, impoverished, ruined; prisoners of war--a fate worse than starvation in Libby--sold to slavery in the West Indies; in a word, everything that can embitter and madden contending factions. Such was the state of things for twenty years; and yet, by no gentle transition, but suddenly, and 'when the restoration of affairs appeared most hopeless,' the son of the beheaded sovereign was brought back to his fathers blood-stained throne, with such 'unexpressible and universal joy' as led the merry monarch to exclaim 'he doubted it had been his own fault he had been absent so long, for he saw nobody who did not protest he had ever wished for his return.' 'In this wonderful manner,' says Clarendon, 'and with this incredible expedition did God put an end to a rebellion that had raged near twenty years, and had been carried on with all the horrid circumstances of murder, devastation and parricide that fire and sword, in the hands of the most wicked men in the world,' (it is a royalist that is speaking,) 'could be instruments of, almost to the desolation of two kingdoms, and the exceeding defacing and deforming of the third. . . By these remarkable steps did the merciful hand of God, in this short space of time, not only bind up and heal all those wounds, but even made the scar as undiscernable as, in respect of the deepness, was possible, which was a glorious addition to the deliverance.'
In Germany, the wars of the Reformation and of Charles V., in the sixteenth century, the Thirty Years war in the seventeenth century, the Seven Years' war in the eighteenth century, not to speak of other less celebrated contests, entailed upon that country all the miseries of intestine strife for more than three centuries. At the close of the last named war--which was the shortest of all, and waged in the most civilized age--'an officer,' says Archenholz, 'rode through seven villages in Hesse, and found in them but one human being.' More than three hundred principalities comprehended in the Empire, fermented with the fierce passions of proud and petty States; at the commencement of this period the castles of robber counts frowned upon every hilltop; a dreadful secret tribunal, whose seat no one knew, whose power none could escape, froze the hearts of men with terror throughout the land; religious hatred mingled its bitter poison in the seething caldron of provincial animosity; but of all these deadly enmities between the States of Germany scarcely the memory remains. There are controversies in that country, at the present day, but they grow mainly out of the rivalry of the two leading powers. There is no country in the world in which the sentiment of national brotherhood is stronger.In Italy, on the breaking up of the Roman Empire, society might be said to be resolved into its original elements--into hostile atoms, whose only movement was that of mutual repulsion. Ruthless barbarians had destroyed the old organizations, and covered the land with a merciless feudalism. As the new civilization grew up, under the wing of the church, the noble families and the walled towns fell madly into conflict with each other; the secular feud of Pope and Emperor scourged the land; province against province, city against city, street against street, waged remorseless war with each other from father to son, till Dante was able to fill his imaginary hell with the real demons of Italian history. So ferocious had the factions become, that the great poet-exile himself, the glory of his native city and of his native language, was, by a decree of the municipality, condemned to be burned alive if found in the city of Florence. But these deadly feuds and hatred yielded to political influences, as the hostile cities were grouped into States under stable governments; the lingering traditions of the ancient animosities gradually died away, and now Tuscan and Lombard, Sardinian and Neapolitan, as if to shame the degenerate sons of America, are joining in one cry for a united Italy.
In France, not to go back to the civil wars of the League, in the sixteenth century, and of the Fronde, in the seventeenth; not to speak of the dreadful scenes throughout the kingdom, which followed the revocation of the edict of Nantes; we have, in the great revolution which commenced at the close of the last century, seen the bloodhounds of civil strife let loose as rarely before in the history of the world. The reign of terror established at Paris stretched its bloody Briarean arms to every city and village in the land, and if the most deadly feuds which ever divided a people had the power to cause permanent alienation and hatred, this surely was the occasion. But far otherwise the fact. In seven years from the fall of Robespierre, the strong arm of the youthful conqueror brought order out of this chaos of crime and woe; Jacobins whose hands were scarcely cleansed from the best blood of France met the returning emigrants, whose estates they had confiscated and whose kindred they had dragged to the guillotine, in the Imperial antechambers; and when, after another turn of the wheel of fortune, Louis XVIII. was restored to his throne, he took the regicide Fouche, who had voted for his brothers death, to his cabinet and confidence.
The people of loyal America will never ask you, sir, to take to your confidence or admit again to a share in the government the hard-hearted men whose cruel lust of power has brought this desolating war upon the land, but there is no personal bitterness felt even against them. They may live, if they can bear to live after wantonly causing the death of so many thousands of their fellow-men; they may live in safe obscurity beneath the shelter of the government they have sought to overthrow, or they may fly to the protection of the governments of Europe--some of them are already there, seeking, happily in vain, to obtain the aid of foreign powers in furtherance of their own treason. There let them stay. The humblest dead soldier, that lies cold and stiff in his grave before us, is an object of envy beneath the clods that cover him, in comparison with the living man, I care not with what trumpery credentials he may be furnished, who is willing to grovel at the foot of a foreign throne for assistance in compassing the ruin of his country.
But the hour is coming and now is, when the power of the leaders of the Rebellion to delude and inflame must cease. There is no bitterness on the part of the masses. The people of the South are not going to wage an eternal war, for the wretched pretext by which this Rebellion is sought to be justified. The bonds that unite us as one people--a substantial community of origin, language, belief, and law, (the four great ties that hold the societies of men together;) common national and political interests; a common history; a common pride in a glorious ancestry; a common interest in this great heritage of blessings; the very geographical features of the country; the mighty rivers that cross the lines of climate and thus facilitate the interchange of natural and industrial products, while the wonder-working arm of the engineer has leveled the mountain-walls which separate the East and West, compelling your own Alleghenies, my Maryland and Pennsylvania friends, to open wide their everlasting doors to the chariot-wheels of traffic and travel; these bonds of union are of perennial force and energy, while the causes of alienation are imaginary, factitious and transient. The heart of the people, North and South, is for the Union. Indications, too plain to be mistaken, announce the fact, both in the East and the West of the States in rebellion. In North Carolina and Arkansas the fatal charm at length is broken. At Raleigh and Little Rock the lips of honest and brave men are unsealed, and an independent press is unlimbering its artillery. When its rifled cannon shall begin to roar, the hosts of treasonable sophistry--the mad delusions of the day--will fly like the Rebel army through the passes of yonder mountain. The weary masses of the people are yearning to see the dear old flag again floating upon their capitols, and they sigh for the return of the peace, prosperity, and happiness, which they enjoyed under a government whose power was felt only in its blessings.And now, friends, fellow citizens of Gettysburg and Pennsylvania, and you from remoter States, let me again, as we part, invoke your benediction on these honored graves. You feel, though the occasion is mournful, that it is good to he here. You feel that it was greatly auspicious for the cause of the country, that the men of the East and men of the West, the men of nineteen sister States, stood side by side, on the perilous ridges of the battle. You now feel it a new bond of union, that they shall lie side by side, till the clarion, louder than that which marshalled them to the combat, shall awake their slumbers. God bless the Union; it is dearer to us for the blood of brave men which has been shed in its defence. The spots on which they stood and fell; these pleasant heights; the fertile plain beneath them; the thriving village whose streets so lately rang with the strange din of war; the fields beyond the ridge, where the noble Reynolds held the advancing foe at bay, and, while he gave up his own life, assured by his forethought and self-sacrifice the triumph of the two succeeding days; the little streams which wind through the hills, on whose banks in aftertimes the wondering ploughman will turn up, with the rude weapons of savage warfare, the fearful missiles of modern artillery; Seminary Ridge, the Peach Orchard, Cemetery, Culp, and Wolf Hill, Round Top, Little Round Top, humble names, henceforward dear and famous--no lapse of time, no distance of space, shall cause you to be forgotten. 'The whole earth,' said Pericles, as he stood over the remains of his fellow citizens, who had fallen in the first year of the Peloponnesian war, 'the whole earth is the sepulchre of illustrious men.' All time, he might have added, is the millennium of their glory. Surely I would do no injustice to the other noble achievements of the war, which have reflected such honor on both arms of the service, and have entitled the armies and the navy of the United States, their officers and men, to the warmest thanks and the richest rewards which a grateful people can pay. But they, I am sure, will join us in saying, as we bid farewell to the dust of these martyr-heroes, that wheresoever throughout the civilized world the accounts of this great warfare are read, and down to the latest period of recorded time, in the glorious annals of our common country, there will be no brighter page than that which relates The Battles of Gettysburg.