ADDRESS TO THE 86TH ILLINOIS REGIMENT.
* This is only a fragment of a speech made by Col. Ingersoll
at Peoria, 111., in 1866, to the 86th Illinois Regiment, at
their anniversary meeting.
PEORIA, ILLS. 1865.
THE history of the past four years seems to me like a terrible dream. It seems almost impossible that the events that have now passed into history ever happened. That hundreds of thousands of men, born and reared under one flag, with the same history, the same future, and, in truth, the same interests, should have met upon the terrible field of death, and for four long years should have fought with a bitterness and determination never excelled; that they should have filled our land with orphans and widows, and made our country hollow with graves, is indeed wonderful; but that the people of the South should have thus fought—thus attempted to destroy and overthrow the Government founded by the heroes of the Revolution—merely for the sake of perpetuating the infamous institution of slavery, is wonderful almost beyond belief.
Strange that people should be found in this, the nineteenth century, to fight against freedom and to die for slavery! It is most wonderful that the terrible war ceased as suddenly as it did, and that the soldiers of the Republic, the moment that the angel of peace spread her white wings over our country, dropped from their hands the instruments of war and eagerly went back to the plough, the shop and the office, and are to-day, with the same determination that characterized them in battle, engaged in effacing every vestige of the desolation and destruction of war. But the progress we have made as a people is if possible still more astonishing. We pretended to be the lovers of freedom, yet we defended slavery. We quoted the Declaration of Independence and voted for the compromise of 1850.
From servility and slavishness we have marched to heroism. We were tyrants. We are liberators. We were slave-catchers. We are now the chivalrous breakers of chains.
From slavery, over a bloody and terrible path, we have marched to freedom. Hirelings of oppression, we have become the champions of justice—the defenders of the right—the pillar upon which rests the hope of the world. To whom are we indebted for this wonderful change? Most of all to you, the soldiers of the great Republic. We thank you that the hands of time were not turned back a thousand years—that the Dark Ages did not again come upon the world—that Prometheus was not again chained—that the river of progress was not stopped or stayed—that the dear blood shed during all the past was not rendered vain—that the sublime faith of all the grand and good did not become a bitter dream, but a reality more glorious than ever entered into the imagination of the rapt heroes of the past. Soldiers of the Eighty-sixth Illinois, we thank you, and through you all the defenders of the Republic, living and dead. We thank you that the deluge of blood has subsided, that the ark of our national safety is at rest, that the dove has returned with the olive branch of peace, and that the dark clouds of war are in the far distance, covered with the beautiful bow.
In the name of humanity, in the name of progress, in the name of freedom, in the name of America, in the name of the oppressed of the whole world, we thank you again and again. We thank you, that in the darkest hour you never despaired of the Republic, that you were not dismayed, that through disaster and defeat, through cruelty and famine, through the serried ranks of the enemy, in spite of false friends, you marched resolutely, unflinchingly and bravely forward. Forward through shot and shell! Forward through fire and sword! Forward past the corpses of your brave comrades, buried in shallow graves by the hurried hands of heroes! Forward past the scattered bones of starved captives! Forward through the glittering bayonet lines, and past the brazen throats of the guns! Forward through the din and roar and smoke and hell of war! Onward through blood and fire to the shining, glittering mount of perfect and complete victory, and from the top your august hands unfurled to the winds the old banner of the stars, and it waves in triumph now, and shall forever, from the St. Lawrence to the Rio Grande, and from the Atlantic to the Pacific!
We thank you that our waving fields of golden wheat and rustling corn are not trodden down beneath the bloody feet of invasion—that our homes are not ashes—that our hearthstones are not desolate—that our towns and cities still stand, that our temples and institutions of learning are secure, that prosperity covers us as with a mantle, and, more than all, we thank you that the Republic still lives; that law and order reign supreme; that the Constitution is still sacred; that a republican government has ceased to be only an experiment, and has become a certainty for all time; that we have by your heroism established the sublime and shining truth that a government by the people, for the people, can and will stand until governments cease among men; that you have given the lie to the impudent and infamous prophecy of tyranny, and that you have firmly established the Republic upon the great ideas of National Unity and Human Liberty.