No man this side the Atlantic forced the Revolution. It was the outcome of oppression that ill fitted a people who had crossed from the other shore, not to bear greater burden, but that they might be full free from the crush of wrong. In its beginning not aggressive, but defensive. A year passed by before it was determined that the yoke should be fully thrown off and absolute independence moved for.
And so it was, when along in the after years came the overt acts of treason that were to force States into rebellion, against the will of their people, every effort, reasonable and unreasonable, was made to conciliate the men whose only desire was not Union, but disintegration. So far did some of the most prominently active, and, I may add, patriotic men of our Country, go in their determination to avoid a resort to arms, that the very amendment to the Constitution of these United States that forever forbids the institution of slavery, would have been, in number, the amendment that would have fastened slavery upon the Country forever, had it not been that just then treason grasped for too much and thereby lost all. Now, when all is safe, it moves us to a condition of agony to recall that in the Winter of '60 and '61, so weighty was the power of the then South, that among the men of our Country, those of best repute, were found so many, who, to avert war, were ready to surrender everything, save the theory of a Central Government for all the States, and the bare privilege to look at the Old Flag.
Our Country is great, our Government is powerful, but no thanks are owing to compromisers for the greatness of the one or the power of the other.
Treason's eagerness for the capture of all saved one generation from the commission of a wrong that the good deeds of all the coming generations could not have atoned for.
It is well to be on guard always.
And what of the present?
The once soldiers of the confederacy are entitled, as individuals, to every manly consideration at our hands; as individuals they are as we are, men walking the journey of life, reaching out to one common goal. But their organized bodies have no claim upon us for recognition. The Government should have taken the life from every "camp" at the birth, and its strong arm should have swept from its soil the first monument to rebellion, with the warning that the placing of the second would be known as treason.
They have been asking that the War be forgotten, and yet they would keep us daily reminded by the flaunting of the confederate bars.
No monument to treason should have been permitted a place on this or other Field, and being here should be returned to the donors, not to be erected elsewhere.