The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Vol. 09 (of 12) / Dresden Edition—Political

by Robert Green Ingersoll

We thank you for our commerce on the high seas, upon our lakes and beautiful rivers, for the credit of our nation, for the value of our money, and for the grand position that we now occupy among the nations of the earth. We thank you for every State redeemed, for every star brought back to glitter again upon the old flag, and we thank you for the grand future that you have opened for us and for our children through all the ages yet to come; and, not only for us and our children, but for mankind.

Thanks to your efforts our country is still an asylum for the oppressed of the Old World; the arms of our charity are still open, we still beckon them across the sea, and they come in multitudes,'leaving home, the graves of their sires, and the dear memories of the heart, and with their wives and little ones come to this, the only free land upon which the sun shines—and with their countless hands of labor add to the wealth, the permanence and the glory of our country. And let them come from the land of Luther, of Hampden and Emmett. Whoever is for freedom and the sacred rights of man is a true American, and as such, we welcome them all. We thank you to-day in the name of four millions of people, whose shackles you have so nobly and generously broken, and who, from the condition of beasts of burden, have by your efforts become men. We thank you in the name of this poor and hitherto despised and insulted race, and say that their emancipation was, and is, the crowning glory of this most terrible war. Peace without liberty could have been only a bloody delusion and a snare. Freedom is peace; Slavery is war.

We must act justly and honorably with these emancipated men, knowing that the eyes of the civilized world are upon us. We must do what is best for both races. We must not be controlled merely by party.

If the Government is founded upon principle, it will stand against the shock of revolution and foreign war as long as liberty is sacred, the rights of man respected, and honor dwells in the hearts of men.

We thank you for the lesson that has been taught the Old World by your patriotism and valor; believing that when the people shall have learned that sublime and divine lesson, thrones will become kingless, kings crownless, royalty an epitaph, the purple of power the shroud of death, the chains of tyranny will fall from the bodies of men, the shackles of superstition from the souls of the people, the spirit of persecution will fly from the earth, and the banner of Universal Freedom, with the words "Civil and Religious Liberty for the World" written upon every fold, blazing from every star, will float over every land and sea under the whole heavens.

We thank you for the glorious past, for the still more glorious future, and will continue to thank you while our hearts are warm with life. We will gather around you in the hour of your death and soothe your last moments with our gratitude. We will follow you tearfully to the narrow house of the dead, and over your sacred remains erect the whitest and purest marble. The hands of love will adorn your last abode, and the chisel will record that beneath rests the sacred dust of the Heroic Saviors of the Great Republic. Such ground will be holy, and future generations will draw inspiration from your tombs, courage from your heroic examples, patience and fortitude from your sufferings, and strength eternal from your success.

I cannot stop without speaking of the heroic dead. It seems to me as though their spirits ought to hover over you to-day—that they might join with us in giving thanks for the great victory,—that their faces might grow radiant to think that their blood was not shed in vain,—that the living are worthy to reap the benefits of their sacrifices, their sufferings and death, and it almost seems as if their sightless eyes are suffused with tears. Then we think of the dear mothers waiting for their sons, of the devoted wives waiting for their husbands, of the orphans asking for fathers whose returning footsteps they can never hear; that while they can say "my country," they cannot say "my son," "my husband," or "my father."

My heart goes out to all the slain, to those heroic corpses sleeping far away from home and kindred in unknown and lonely graves, to those poor pieces of dear, bleeding earth that won for me the blessings I enjoy to-day.

Shall I recount their sufferings? They were starved day by day with a systematic and calculating cruelty never equaled by the most savage tribes. They were confined in dens as though they had been beasts, and then they slowly faded and wasted from life. Some were released from their sufferings by blessed insanity, until their parched and fevered lips, their hollow and glittering eyes, were forever closed by the angel of death. And thus they died, with the voices of loved ones in their ears; the faces of the dear absent hovering over them; around them their dying comrades, and the fiendish slaves of slavery.

And what shall I say more of the regiment before me? It is enough that you were a part of the great army that accomplished so much for America and mankind.