=94.= HIS MILITARY SERVICES IN AMERICA.
There were indeed other and heroic volunteers from European countries, but they were either exiles who had no homes, or they were soldiers by profession, who followed the sword wherever a harvest was to be reaped with it…. Lafayette's first act in America gave new evidence of disinterestedness and magnanimity. He found the small patriot army rent asunder by jealous feuds growing out of ambition for preferment. What revolution, however holy, has not suffered by such evils! How many a revolution has been lost by them! Schuyler, the brave, the high-spirited, and wise, now the victim of an intrigue, was hesitating whether to submit to a privation of rank justly due him, or to resign. Putnam's recent promotion produced bitter complaints; and Gates was laboring night and day, aided by a powerful faction, to displace Washington from the chief command. The correspondence of the Father of his country, now first published, reveals the fact that the compensation attached to military rank was by no means an unimportant object of the universal rage for preferment, which then threatened to break up the army. Lafayette set a noble example to the republican chiefs. He declined the tender of a commission as major-general, with the emoluments, and stipulated, on the contrary, for leave to serve without reward, and even without a command, until he should have made a title to it by actual achievements. He won his commission by the blood he gave to his adopted country in the battle of Brandywine, by rallying the troops in the retreat at Chester Bridge, and by his brave resistance and capture, with the aid of militia-men, of a superior force of British and Hessian regulars; and thus, without exciting murmurs among his compatriots, and with the thanks of Congress, he rose to the command of a division in the army of the United States. Lavish of gold, as he had already shown that he was lavish of blood, he clothed and equipped these troops, numbering two thousand, at his own expense; and they soon became, under his exact but affectionate discipline, the favorite corps of the whole army.
Lafayette stood second to Washington in the affections of the American people, and in the applauses of the friends of liberty throughout the world. Certainly whatever honors that people could have conferred upon any one would have been sure to wait on him. Let those who think that preferment, power, and applause are always the chief objects of human ambition, look now at this illustrious and yet youthful personage, cheerfully resigning his command, and without one murmur of regret for the honors laid down, or one glance towards the honors gathering before him, taking affectionate leave of his companions in arms, and their great chief, and returning to his native land, to resume there the duties he owed as a subject and member of the State, in France.
[Footnote 24: A prominent statesman, formerly Governor of New York, of which state he is a native. He is known in literature by many addresses, speeches, and diplomatic papers, often of high merit.]
* * * * *
=Abraham Lincoln,[25] 1809-1865.=
"Speech at the Dedication of the National Cemetery at Gettysburg,"
November 19, 1883.
=95.= OBLIGATION TO THE PATRIOT DEAD.
Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth upon this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But in a larger sense we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it far above our power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here; but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us, the living, rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here, have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us, that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion; that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that governments of the people, by the people, and for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
[Footnote 25: Born in Kentucky; a prominent lawyer and statesman of Illinois; was elected President of the United States in 1860; was eminent for his profound appreciation of 'the subsequent struggle, and for his patriotic appeals in behalf of the nation. Assassinated April 13, 1865.]