Addresses: by John A. Martin. Delivered in Kansas.

by John Alexander Martin

Let us, then, keep up the Grand Army, and our camp-fires, our reunions, our social gatherings. They typify a comradeship that should touch and warm every soldier’s heart. In all the years since the final muster-out, there have been no such friendships formed as were those cemented in the early mornings long ago, when the boys fell in and answered “Here” to the orderly’s call; or during the dusty and exhausting marches when the white pikes stretched so wearily long, and the evening camp-fires were so near and yet so far; or amid the sulphurous smoke of battle, when they “closed up on the colors” as the line dwindled away before the hot and furious fire of the enemy. The comradeship that springs from such associations and scenes as these, is worth preserving.

This is the great “Soldier State” of the Union—the State which began the civil war six years before any other State had enlisted a regiment. Kansas sent more men to swell the ranks of the Union army, in proportion to population, than any other State; it had a larger percentage of its soldiers killed or wounded in battle than any other State. One-twelfth of its present total population served in the ranks of the Union army. For Kansas was not only the first cause of the war, but the new home to which the veterans turned their footsteps when their marches and battles were over. Every regiment that served in the army of the Republic has contributed its quota to swell this magnificent population, and there are men sitting around quiet hearthstones in every county of the State who can give personal recollections of every march, every campaign, every battle of the war, from Bull Run to Bentonville. In this audience, I have no doubt, are men who have been participants in every great battle of the Rebellion.

Here in Kansas, too, is a generation of young men and women who have in their veins the blood of heroes and patriots. In this audience are hundreds of young men and women whose baby eyes witnessed sad partings, when their fathers hurried away to join the company mustering in the village square. Here are matrons who were young wives, sweethearts or sisters then, and who, busy with household cares, heard the faint throbbing of the far-away drum, and days and weeks before a word was spoken, read in the troubled but resolute eyes of husbands, lovers, and brothers the thought that was busy in their brains—the thought of a stricken country, sadly needing men. They knew, these patient, loving women, what was coming, and in the silence of their rooms, in loneliness and bitter tears, they prayed that, if possible, the shadow of this great grief might be lifted from their home; and that those nearest and dearest to them might remain, to lighten their cares and brighten their daily life. But when at last the word was spoken, a race of self-sacrificing and heroic women stood side by side in patriotic devotion with a race of heroic men, and the whole world learned, as the long procession of weary months and years went by, that the men and women of ’76 had worthy successors in the men and women of ’61 and ’65.

The “boys” of twenty-three years ago are men of mature age; the men of that day are growing old. The faded and tattered battle-flags they followed are preserved in the State-houses. The old sword or musket hanging over the mantel is rusty with age. Every year the ranks are thinning. Wounds and disease, the legacy of battle-field, march and bivouac, are doing their sure work. The glad picture they saw, looking forward through the lurid smoke and flame of battle, as the reward of all their toils and sacrifices—the picture of a mighty Nation, compact, prosperous, free, and respected by all the Nations of the earth—has been fully realized. There is no limit to the power, no measure to the wealth, of the redeemed and enfranchised Republic. Only the memories of a heroic struggle are left us. But until the last survivors of the Grand Army that marched and fought with Lyon, Blunt, McClellan, Rosecrans, Meade, Sheridan, Thomas, Sherman, and Grant, are finally mustered out, let them preserve their comradeship, and keep forever fresh and fair in their hearts the glorious recollections and still more glorious principles of the far-away days when they were soldiers of the Republic.

Soldiers of the Union! again I bid you welcome. I welcome you, as citizens of this great State, to its Capital. I welcome you as patriot heroes, who, during the darkest days the Republic has ever known, gladly and proudly periled health and life to save it from destruction. I welcome you as the men whose strong arms and brave hearts gave Freedom to the Slave, and made this land, in fact as well as in name, a land of Liberty. And with my whole heart I salute you in Fraternity, Charity, and Loyalty, and welcome you as comrades.

THE KANSAS NATIONAL GUARD.

Address of welcome, delivered to the Kansas National Guard, at Topeka, September 29, 1885.

Soldiers of the Kansas National Guard: In a recent story by a well-known American author, the characters engage in an after-dinner discussion concerning the war of the Rebellion, and one of them remarks that the astonishing fact connected with it was the superabundance of heroism it revealed. Then he asks his son: “How many young men do you know who would think it sweet to die for their country?” Very modestly the young man replies: “I can’t think of a great many at the moment, sir.” Whereupon, his uncle, a gallant soldier during the war, says: “Nor could I in 1861; nevertheless they were there.”

The occasion is wanting now, but as “they were there” in 1861, so I have faith to believe that any great cause would find them now. I can remember hearing dolorous orators, in the years just preceding the outbreak of the Rebellion, bewailing the degeneracy of the times, and declaring that heroism and patriotism were things of the past. The flash of the gun at Sumter revealed not only the Nation’s peril, but its strength and glory. In a month, farms and workshops were deserted, and the peaceful North, transfigured by the splendor of its passion, became a Nation of warriors.

In the story to which I have already referred, one of the characters, after quietly telling an incident of a desperate battle, in which his regiment sustained a severe loss, says, with intense feeling: “I don’t want to see any more men killed in my time.” This sentiment will, I feel confident, be approved by every soldier of the late war. Certainly, I hope that no occasion for calling the “Kansas National Guard” into active service may ever arise. But I am sure that if such an occasion did come, you would be equal to its duties and its responsibilities. Some of you know what war is. You learned it on fields where the earth trembled with the shock of contending hosts. Most, if not all of you, have in your veins the blood of men who were soldiers and heroes. And I am confident that, if you were called upon in any emergency demanding an illustration of true soldierly qualities, you would prove yourselves worthy successors of the men of 1861–5.