And, indeed, I would here in closing fain address a few words to such of you, if any such are here, who like myself may nave been soldiers during the War of the Rebellion. We should never more be partisans. We have been a part of great events in the service of the common country, we have worn her uniform, we have received her pay and devoted ourselves to the death, if need be, in her service. When we were blackened by the smoke of Antietam, we did not ask or care whether those who stood shoulder to shoulder beside us, whether he who led us, whether those who sustained us, were Democrats or Republicans, conservatives or radicals; we asked only that they might prove as true as was the steel we grasped, and as brave as we ourselves would fain have been. When we stood like a wall of stone vomiting fire from the heights of Gettysburg,—nailed to our position through three long days of mortal Hell,—did we ask each other whether that brave officer who fell while gallantly leading the counter-charge—whether that cool gunner steadily serving his piece before us amid the storm of shot and shell—whether the poor wounded, mangled, gasping comrades, crushed and torn, and dying in agony around us—had voted for Lincoln or Douglas, for Breckenridge or Bell? We then were full of other thoughts. We prized men for what they were worth to the common country of us all, and recked not of empty words. Was the man true, was he brave, was he earnest, was all we thought of then;—not, did he vote or think with us, or label himself with our party name? This lesson let us try to remember. We cannot give to party all that we once offered to country, but our duty is not yet done. We are no longer, what we have been, the young guard of the Republic; we have earned an exemption from the dangers of the field and camp, and the old musket or the crossed sabres hang harmless over our winter fires, never more to be grasped in these hands henceforth devoted to more peaceful labors; but the duties of the citizen, and of the citizen who has received his baptism in fire, are still incumbent upon us. Though young in years, we should remember that henceforth, and as long as we live in the land, we are the ancients,—the veterans of the Republic. As such, it is for us to protect in peace what we preserved in war; it is for us to look at all things with a view to the common country and not to the exigencies of party politics; it is for us ever to bear in mind the higher allegiance we have sworn, and to remember that he who has once been a soldier of the motherland degrades himself forever when he becomes the slave of faction. Then at last, if through life we ever bear these lessons freshly in mind will it be well for us, will it be well for our country, will it be well for those whose names we bear, that our bones also do not molder with those of our brave comrades beneath the sods of Gettysburg, or that our graves do not look down on the swift-flowing Mississippi from the historic heights of Vicksburg?
JOHN ADAMS (1735-1826)
John Adams, second President of the United States, was not a man of the strong emotional temperament which so often characterizes the great orator. He was fitted by nature for a student and scholar rather than to lead men by the direct appeal the orator makes to their emotions, their passions, or their judgment His inclinations were towards the Church; but after graduating from Harvard College, which he entered at the age of sixteen, he had a brief experience as a school-teacher and found it so distasteful to him that he adopted the law as a relief, without waiting to consult his inclinations further. "Necessity drove me to this determination," he writes, "but my inclination was to preach." He began the practice of law in his native village of Braintree, Massachusetts, and took no prominent part in public affairs until 1765, when he appeared as counsel for the town of Boston in proceedings growing out of the Stamp Act difficulties.
From this time on, his name is constantly associated with the great events of the Revolution. That be never allowed his prejudices as a patriot to blind him to his duties as a lawyer, he showed by appearing as counsel for the British soldiers who killed Crispus Attucks, Samuel Gray, and others, in the Boston riot of 1770. He was associated in this case with Josiah Quincy, and the two distinguished patriots conducted the case with such ability that the soldiers were acquitted—as no doubt they should have been.
Elected a member of the Continental Congress, Mr. Adams did work in it which identified him in an enduring way with the formative period of republican institutions in America. This must be remembered in passing upon his acts when as President, succeeding Washington, he is brought into strong contrast with the extreme republicans of the French school. In the Continental Congress, contrasted with English royalists and conservatives Mr. Adams himself appeared an extremist, as later on, under the same law of contrast, he appeared conservative when those who were sometimes denounced as "Jacobins" and "Levellers" were fond of denouncing him as a disguised royalist.
Prior to his administration as President, he had served as commissioner to the court of France, "Minister Plenipotentiary for the Purpose of Negotiating a Treaty of Peace and Commerce with Great Britain"; commissioner to conclude a treaty with the States-General of Holland; minister to England after the conclusion of peace, and finally as Vice-President under Washington. His services in every capacity in which he was engaged for his country showed his great ability and zeal: but in the struggle over the Alien and Sedition Laws his opponents gave him no quarter and when he retired from the Presidency it was with the feeling, shared to some extent by his great opponent Jefferson, that republics never have a proper regard for the services and sacrifices of statesmen, though they are only too ready to reward military heroes beyond their deserts. The author of 'Familiar Letters on Public Affairs' writes of Mr. Adams:—
"He was a man of strong mind, great learning, and eminent ability to use knowledge both in speech and writing. He was ever a firm believer in Christianity, not from habit and example but from a diligent investigation of its proofs. He had an uncompromising regard for his own opinion and was strongly contrasted with Washington in this respect. He seemed to have supposed that his opinions could not have been corrected by those of other men or bettered by any comparison."
It might be inferred from this that Mr. Adams was as obstinate in prejudice as in opinion, but as he had demonstrated to the contrary in taking the unpopular cause of the British soldiers at the beginning of his public career, he showed it still more strikingly by renewing and continuing until his death a friendship with Jefferson which had been interrupted by the fierce struggle over the Alien and Sedition Act.
INAUGURAL ADDRESS (March 4th. 1797)
When it was first perceived, in early times, that no middle course for America remained, between unlimited submission to a foreign legislature and a total independence of its claims, men of reflection were less apprehensive of danger from the formidable powers of fleets and armies they must determine to resist, than from those contests and dissensions which would certainly arise concerning the forms of government to be instituted over the whole and over the parts of this extensive country. Relying, however, on the purity of their attentions, the justice of their cause, and the integrity and intelgence of the people, under an over-ruling Providence, which had so signally protected this country from the first, the representatives of this nation, then consisting of little more than half its present numbers, not only broke to pieces the chains which were forging, and the rod of iron that was lifted up, but frankly cut asunder the ties which had bound them, and launched into an ocean of uncertainty.