You stand here to-day, having fully earned the proud title of veteran soldiers. Four times you have crossed the Potomac, twice the Chickahominy, four times the Rappahannock. You have marched by land and water; by night and day. You have fought in trenches, and in fields; supported batteries and charged bayonets, until the honors of war, the smell of powder, the scars of shell and ball, and the red dust of twelve battle-fields are upon you.
But while we enjoy the blessings of this hour, let us not forget the many heroes whom we have left behind us. They are quietly slumbering in the dust. All along the Potomac, on either side; up and down the Peninsula; amid the swamps of the Chickahominy; on the sunny banks of the James River, and on the sandy shores of the Rappahannock—in little groves, on sandy hillocks; in fields, and by the road-side—are seen the silent resting places of our patriotic dead. The green pine waves over them, chanting mournful dirges to the piping winds; the new-grown grass clusters around them; the sweet fragrance of the summer’s flowers is wafted over them, and the birds warble their notes of song among them; but no mother’s voice is heard there; no sister’s tear has ever wet the cold sod of the brave sleeper.
This is not a Democratic war, nor a Republican war; neither is it a “Negro war,” nor an “Abolition war.” Let us regard all such appellations as the result of mere party spirit rather than of genuine loyalty. This is the Nation’s war. It is loyalty struggling to suppress disloyalty. It is right arrayed against wrong; Union against Disunion; order and obedience against confusion and rebellion. In this struggle let us worship at no political shrine.
For a time we may be defeated, but not conquered. The States of this glorious Union are inseparably linked together by the eternal laws of nature. The silvery chain of lakes on the North, the sparkling sea gulfs on the South, the broad Atlantic on the East, and the shores of the Pacific on the West, have firmly and legally solemnized these political nuptials, and bound them in one grand, sacred, federal bond of everlasting union. “What therefore God hath joined together let not man put asunder.”
But I must not detain you longer. I will only point you to that tattered old flag—pierced by ball and rent with shell; faded by sun and storm, and worn into shreds by the breezes of heaven, which have flaunted her furls over fields of blood, marring her stripes, and plucking from her proud constellation some of her brilliant stars. There she hangs in all the glory of her chivalry!—time-honored—a rich relic, sacred to the memory of the brave.
“Invincible banner! the flag of the free,
Oh, where treads the foot that would falter for thee,
Or the hands to be folded till freedom is won,
And the eagle looks proud, as of old, to the sun?
Give tears for the parting; a murmur of prayer,