NORTHERN GREETING TO SOUTHERN VETERANS
From "Speeches and Addresses," with the permission of the author and of
Houghton Mifflin Company, publishers.
BY HENRY CABOT LODGE
I was a boy ten years old when the troops marched away to defend Washington. I saw the troops, month after month, pour through the streets of Boston. I saw Shaw go forth at the head of his black regiment, and Bartlett, shattered in body, but dauntless in soul, ride by to carry what was left of him once more to the battlefields of the Republic. I saw Andrew, standing bareheaded on the steps of the State House, bid the men godspeed. I cannot remember the words he said, but I can never forget the fervid eloquence which brought tears to the eyes and fire to the hearts of all who listened. To my boyish mind one thing alone was clear, that the soldiers, as they marched past, were all, in that supreme hour, heroes and patriots. Other feelings have, in the progress of time, altered much, but amid many changes that simple belief of boyhood has never altered.
And you, brave men who wore the gray, would be the first to hold me or any other son of the North in just contempt if I should say that now it was all over I thought the North was wrong and the result of the war a mistake. To the men who fought the battles of the Confederacy we hold out our hands freely, frankly, and gladly. We have no bitter memories to revive, no reproaches to utter. Differ in politics and in a thousand other ways we must and shall in all good nature, but never let us differ with each other on sectional or state lines, by race or creed.
We welcome you, soldiers of Virginia, as others more eloquent than I have said, to New England. We welcome you to old Massachusetts. We welcome you to Boston and to Faneuil Hall. In your presence here, and at the sound of your voices beneath this historic roof, the years roll back, and we see the figure and hear again the ringing tones of your great orator, Patrick Henry, declaring to the first Continental Congress, "The distinctions between Virginians, Pennsylvanians, New Yorkers, and New Englanders are no more. I am not a Virginian, but an American."
A distinguished Frenchman, as he stood among the graves of Arlington, said: "Only a great people is capable of a great civil war." Let us add with thankful hearts that only a great people is capable of a great reconciliation. Side by side Virginia and Massachusetts led the colonies into the War for Independence. Side by side they founded the government of the United States. Morgan and Greene, Lee and Knox, Moultrie and Prescott, men of the South and men of the North, fought shoulder to shoulder, and wore the same uniform of buff and blue,—the uniform of Washington.
Mere sentiment all this, some may say. But it is sentiment, true sentiment, that has moved the world. Sentiment fought the war, and sentiment has reunited us.
So I say that the sentiment manifested by your presence here, brethren of Virginia, sitting side by side with those who wore the blue, tells us that if war should break again upon the country the sons of Virginia and Massachusetts would, as in the olden days, stand once more shoulder to shoulder, with no distinction in the colors that they wear. It is fraught with tidings of peace on earth, and you may read its meaning in the words on yonder picture, "Liberty and union, now and forever, one and inseparable!"