DECORATION DAY ADDRESS.
Project Gutenberg EPUB3 edition
Ingersoll, Robert Green and Widger, David
* Empty sleeves worn by veterans with scanty locks and grizzled mustaches graced the Metropolitan Opera House last night. On the breasts of their faded uniforms glittered the badges of the legions in which they had fought and suffered, and beside them sat the wives and daughters, whose hearts had ached at home while they served their country at the front. Every seat in the great Opera House was filled, and hundreds stood, glad to And any place where they could see and hear. And the gathering and the proceedings were worthy of the occasion. Mr. Depew upon taking the chair said that he had the chief treat of the evening to present to the audience, and that was Robert G. Ingersoll, the greatest living orator, and one of the great controversialists of the age. Then came the orator of the occasion Col. Ingersoll, whose speech is printed herewith. Enthusiastic cheers greeted all his points, and his audience simply went wild at the end. It was a grand oration, and it was listened to by enthusiastic and appreciative hearers, upon whom not a single word was lost, and in whose hearts every word awoke a responsive echo. Nor did the enthusiasm which Col. Ingersoll created end until the very last, when the whole assemblage arose and sang "America" in a way which will never be forgotten by any one present. It was a great ending of a great evening.—The New York Times, May 31st, 1888.
New York City.
1888.
THIS is a sacred day—a day for gratitude and love.
To-day we commemorate more than independence, more than the birth of a nation, more than the fruits of the Revolution, more than physical progress, more than the accumulation of wealth, more than national prestige and power.
We commemorate the great and blessed victory over ourselves—the triumph of civilization, the reformation of a people, the establishment of a government consecrated to the preservation of liberty and the equal rights of man.
Nations can win success, can be rich and powerful, can cover the earth with their armies, the seas with their fleets, and yet be selfish, small and mean. Physical progress means opportunity for doing good. It means responsibility. Wealth is the end of the despicable, victory the purpose of brutality.
But there is something nobler than all these—something that rises above wealth and power—something above lands and palaces—something above raiment and gold—it is the love of right, the cultivation of the moral nature, the desire to do justice, the inextinguishable love of human liberty.
Nothing can be nobler than a nation governed by conscience, nothing more infamous than power without pity, wealth without honor and without the sense of justice.
Only by the soldiers of the right can the laurel be won or worn.
On this day we honor the heroes who fought to make our Nation just and free—who broke the shackles of the slave, who freed the masters of the South and their allies of the North. We honor chivalric men who made America the hope and beacon of the human race—the foremost Nation of the world.
These heroes established the first republic, and demonstrated that a government in which the legally expressed will of the people is sovereign and supreme is the safest, strongest, securest, noblest and the best.
They demonstrated the human right of the people, and of all the people, to make and execute the laws—that authority does not come from the clouds, or from ancestry, or from the crowned and titled, or from constitutions and compacts, laws and customs—not from the admissions of the great, or the concessions of the powerful and victorious—not from graves, or consecrated dust—not from treaties made between successful robbers—not from the decisions of corrupt and menial courts—not from the dead, but from the living—not from the past but from the present, from the people of to-day—from the brain, from the heart and from the conscience of those who live and love and labor.
The history of this world for the most part is the history of conflict and war, of invasion, of conquest, of victorious wrong, of the many enslaved by the few.
Millions have fought for kings, for the destruction and enslavement of their fellow-men. Millions have battled for empire, and great armies have been inspired by the hope of pillage; but for the first time in the history of this world millions of men battled for the right, fought to free not themselves, but others, not for prejudice, but for principle, not for conquest, but for conscience.
The men whom we honor were the liberators of a Nation, of a whole country, North and South—of two races. They freed the body and the brain, gave liberty to master and to slave. They opened all the highways of thought, and gave to fifty millions of people the inestimable legacy of free speech.
They established the free exchange of thought. They gave to the air a flag without a stain, and they gave to their country a Constitution that honest men can reverently obey. They destroyed the hateful, the egotistic and provincial—they established a Nation, a national spirit, a national pride and a patriotism as broad as the great Republic.
They did away with that ignorant and cruel prejudice that human rights depend on race or color, and that the superior race has the right to oppress the inferior. They established the sublime truth that the superior are the just, the kind, the generous, and merciful—that the really superior are the protectors, the defenders, and the saviors of the oppressed, of the fallen, the unfortunate, the weak and helpless. They established that greatest of all truths that nothing is nobler than to labor and suffer for others.
If we wish to know the extent of our debt to these heroes, these soldiers of the right, we must know what we were and what we are. A few years ago we talked about liberty, about the freedom of the world, and while so talking we enslaved our fellow-men. We were the stealers of babes and the whippers of women. We were in partnership with bloodhounds. We lived on unpaid labor. We held manhood in contempt. Honest toil was disgraceful—sympathy was a crime—pity was unconstitutional—humanity contrary to law, and charity was treason. Men were imprisoned for pointing out in heaven's dome the Northern Star—for giving food to the hungry, water to the parched lips of thirst, shelter to the hunted, succor to the oppressed. In those days criminals and courts, pirates and pulpits were in partnership—liberty was only a word standing for the equal rights of robbers.
For many years we insisted that our fathers had founded a free Government, that they were the lovers of liberty, believers in equal rights. We were mistaken. The colonists did not believe in the freedom of to-day. Their laws were filled with intolerance, with slavery and the infamous spirit of caste. They persecuted and enslaved. Most of them were narrow, ignorant and cruel. For the most part, their laws were more brutal than those of the nations from which they came. They branded the forehead of intelligence, bored with hot irons the tongue of truth. They persecuted the good and enslaved the helpless. They were believers in pillories and whipping-posts for honest, thoughtful men.
When their independence was secured they adopted a Constitution that legalized slavery, and they passed laws making it the duty of free men to prevent others from becoming free. They followed the example of kings and nobles. They knew that monarchs had been interested in the slave trade, and that the first English commander of a slave-ship divided his profits with a queen.
They forgot all the splendid things they had said—the great principles they had so proudly and eloquently announced. The sublime truths faded from their hearts. The spirit of trade, the greed for office, took possession of their souls. The lessons of history were forgotten. The voices coming from all the wrecks of kingdoms, empires and republics on the shores of the great river were unheeded and unheard.
If the foundation is not justice, the dome cannot be high enough, or splendid enough, to save the temple.
But above everything in the minds of our fathers was the desire for union—to create a Nation, to become a Power.
Our fathers compromised.
A compromise is a bargain in which each party defrauds the other, and himself.
The compromise our fathers made was the coffin of honor and the cradle of war.
A brazen falsehood and a timid truth are the parents of compromise.
But some—the greatest and the best—believed in liberty for all. They repeated the splendid sayings of the Roman: "By the law of nature all men are free;"—of the French King: "Men are born free and equal;"—of the sublime Zeno: "All men are by nature equal, and virtue alone establishes a difference between them."
In the year preceding the Declaration of Independence, a society for the abolition of slavery was formed in Pennsylvania and its first President was one of the wisest and greatest of men—Benjamin Franklin. A society of the same character was established in New York in 1785; its first President was John Jay—the second, Alexander Hamilton.
But in a few years these great men were forgotten. Parties rivaled each other in the defence of wrong. Politicians cared only for place and power. In the clamor of the heartless, the voice of the generous was lost. Slavery became supreme. It dominated legislatures, courts and parties; it rewarded the faithless and little; it degraded the honest and great.
And yet, through all these hateful years, thousands and thousands of noble men and women denounced the degradation and the crime. Most of their names are unknown. They have given a glory to obscurity. They have filled oblivion with honor.
In the presence of death it has been the custom to speak of the worthlessness, and the vanity, of life. I prefer to speak of its value, of its importance, of its nobility and glory.
Life is not merely a floating shadow, a momentary spark, a dream that vanishes. Nothing can be grander than a life filled with great and noble thoughts—with brave and honest deeds. Such a life sheds light, and the seeds of truth sown by great and loyal men bear fruit through all the years to be. To have lived and labored and died for the right—nothing can be sublimer.
History is but the merest outline of the exceptional—of a few great crimes, calamities, wars, mistakes and dramatic virtues. A few mountain peaks are touched, while all the valleys of human life, where countless victories are won, where labor wrought with love—are left in the eternal shadow.
But these peaks are not the foundation of nations. The forgotten words, the unrecorded deeds, the unknown sacrifices, the heroism, the industry, the patience, the love and labor of the nameless good and great have for the most part founded, guided and defended States. The world has been civilized by the unregarded poor, by the untitled nobles, by the uncrowned kings who sleep in unknown graves mingled with the common dust.
They have thought and wrought, have borne the burdens of the world. The pain and labor have been theirs—the glory has been given to the few.
The conflict came. The South unsheathed the sword. Then rose the embattled North, and these men who sleep to-night beneath the flowers of half the world, gave all for us.
They gave us a Nation—a republic without a slave—a republic that is sovereign, and to whose will every citizen and every State must bow. They gave us a Constitution for all—one that can be read without shame and defended without dishonor. They freed the brain, the lips and hands of men.
All that could be done by force was done. All that could be accomplished by the adoption of constitutions was done. The rest is left to education—the innumerable influences of civilization—to the development of the intellect, to the cultivation of the heart and the imagination.