For one, acknowledging that soldiers’ reunions and the Grand Army organization do all this, and are all this, I make no apologies for them. On the contrary, I rejoice that the Grand Army is growing more popular with the men who wore the blue, and that soldiers’ reunions and camp-fires are held with more and more frequency. When the people cease to remember that there have been times when men cheerfully periled health and life for a good cause, they cease to believe in such a thing as patriotism. There is something in example, and these organizations of old soldiers, these reunions of old soldiers, reviving recollections of the old days, when nearly three million men stepped out of the monotony of commonplace lives, and glorified a glorious cause by patient endurance of hardships and privations, and the heroism of death—this example cannot be without its uses in teaching the younger generations of Americans, enjoying the birthright won at Yorktown and preserved at Appomattox, that love of country, courage, and devotion to duty should endure forever.
And why should not the memories of the late war be kept alive? Was there ever, since the morning stars first sang together, a more patriotic, a holier, a greater war than that waged for the Union? We have been celebrating the Declaration of Independence, as I have said, for over a century. Yet the total free population of the American Colonies, at the outbreak of the Revolutionary war, was, in round numbers, 369,000 less than the number of Union soldiers mustered into service during the late civil war. The Continental army, during the Revolutionary war, never exceeded 76,000 men, present and absent; our army, during the war of 1812, aggregated only 38,186; and the total force of the United States during the war with Mexico was only 116,321. During the war of the Rebellion, 2,772,408 men enlisted in the Union army, and from January 1st, 1863, to May 1st, 1865, our army numbered, at all times, nearly 1,000,000 trained soldiers. Kansas alone furnished nearly half as many men for the Union army as were present for duty during any year of the Revolutionary struggle, under Washington.
There were more Union soldiers killed in battle during the war of the Rebellion, and more died of wounds received in battle, than were present for duty during any previous war in which the United States has been engaged. In the National Cemeteries, 318,870 soldiers of the Union are buried—more than four times as many as were enlisted during the Revolutionary war. The latest and most accurate statements show that 44,238 Union soldiers were killed in battle; 49,205 died of wounds received in battle; 9,058 were drowned or accidentally killed; 184 were executed by the enemy; 224,899 died of disease, and 14,155 of causes not stated—making a total of 341,719.
There were 49 engagements, large and small, during the eight years of the Revolution. There were 2,261 during the four years of the Rebellion. And in each of 149 of these the Union loss exceeded 500 men killed and wounded; in each of eighty-eight it was over 1,000; in fifty-two, over 2,000; in twenty-three, over 5,000; in fourteen, over 10,000; and in each of four, over 20,000.
The engagements of the war of 1812 numbered only 89, and the casualties aggregated 1,877 killed, and 3,737 wounded—a total of 5,614.
In the Mexican war there were only twenty-one engagements, in which the Americans lost 1,049 killed and 3,420 wounded—a total of 4,469. At the famous battle of Palo Alto, the American loss, in killed and wounded, aggregated only 174; at Monterey, 488; at Buena Vista, 723; at Cerro Gordo, 250; and at Molino del Rey, 787.
The aggregate casualties of the American troops in all previous wars were less than those of the Union army at each of the great battles of Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, Chicamauga or Spottsylvania, and hardly reached one-half the casualties of Grant’s campaign through the Wilderness, or Sherman’s campaign against Atlanta.
I am not citing these facts to depreciate the importance of previous wars, and certainly I would be the last person to depreciate the patriotism and valor of the soldiers who took part in them. I reverence the memory of the “embattled farmers” who, on the village green at Lexington, “fired the shot heard round the world;” I honor the soldiers who, from behind the cotton-bales at New Orleans, taught the trained soldiers of Great Britain a new lesson of war; and I glory in the fame which our little army won on the red fields of Mexico. But I want to make plain and clear the fact that the war for the Union was immeasurably greater than any struggle of modern times, not only in the vast armies it called into being, but in the heroism and patriotism it inspired, and the momentous results depending on its issue.
Why, too, should not the sentiments and prejudices of the late civil war be perpetuated? The war saved the Union and emancipated a race. And in that single sentence what volumes of precious history, what glorious records of heroism, sacrifices and patriotism are condensed! What a noble lifting of all that is exalting in human nature, what a splendid record of patient devotion to duty, what self-forgetfulness and magnificent courage does it stand for! What centuries of human progress does it typify! It was a war for Freedom and National Unity. It was not waged for conquest, nor glory, nor ambition. It was a war to preserve, for all the generations of men, the priceless heritage of self-government. It was a war to vindicate the majesty of outraged law. It was a war to maintain this Republic as a beacon-light for all the world. It was a war, as the greatest of its martyrs said, waged “that a government of the people, by the people, for the people, should not perish from the earth.”
For the existence of the Grand Army, and for the reunions in which it delights to take part, no apology is, therefore, necessary. They should be kept up because they do preserve the memories of the war; because they do perpetuate the sentiments, the emotions, and even the prejudices of that glorious struggle. They were noble sentiments, pure emotions, honest and patriotic prejudices, those born of the country’s great peril and happy deliverance, and no true soldier, no true American, should be ashamed of them.