The doubter may scoff, and the pessimist may croak, but even they must take hope at the picture presented in the simple and touching incident of eight Grand Army veterans, with their silvery heads bowed in sympathy, escorting the lifeless body of the Daughter of the Confederacy from Narragansett to its last, long rest at Richmond.
When that great and generous soldier, U. S. Grant, gave back to Lee, crushed, but ever glorious, the sword he had surrendered at Appomattox, that magnanimous deed said to the people of the South: "You are our brothers." But when the present ruler of our grand republic on awakening to the condition of war that confronted him, with his first commission placed the leader's sword in the hands of those gallant confederate commanders, Joe Wheeler and Fitzhugh Lee, he wrote between the lines in living letters of everlasting light the words: "There is but one people of this Union, one flag alone for all."
The South, Mr. Toastmaster, will feel that her sons have been well given, that her blood has been well spilled, if that sentiment is to be indeed the true inspiration of our nation's future. God grant it may be as I believe it will.
Speech of Henry Cabot Lodge, delivered at a banquet complimentary to the Robert E. Lee Camp of Confederate Veterans, of Richmond, Va., given in Faneuil Hall, Boston, June 17, 1887. The Southerners were visiting Boston as the special guests of the John A. Andrew Post 15, Department of Massachusetts, Grand Army of the Republic.
MR. CHAIRMAN:--To such a toast, sir, it would seem perhaps most fitting that one of those should respond who were a part of the great event which it recalls. Yet, after all, on an occasion like this, it may not be amiss to call upon one who belongs to a generation to whom the Rebellion is little more than history, and who, however insufficiently, represents the feelings of that and the succeeding generations as to our great Civil War. I was a boy ten years old when the troops marched away to defend Washington, and my personal knowledge of that time is confined to a few broken but vivid memories. I saw the troops, month after month, pour through the streets of Boston, I saw Shaw go forth at the head of his black regiment, and Bartlett, shattered in body but dauntless in soul, ride by to carry what was left of him once more to the battlefields of the republic. I saw Andrew, standing bare headed on the steps of the state house, bid the men God speed. I cannot remember the words he said, but I can never forget the fervid eloquence which brought tears to the eyes and fire to the hearts of all who listened. I understood but dimly the awful meaning of these events. To my boyish mind one thing alone was clear, that the soldiers as they marched past were all, in that supreme hour, heroes and patriots. Amid many changes that simple belief of boyhood has never altered. The gratitude which I felt then I confess to-day more strongly than ever. But other feelings have in the progress of time altered much. I have learned, and others of my generation as they came to man's estate have learned, what the war really meant, and they have also learned to know and to do justice to the men who fought the war upon the other side.