* The Elmwood Reunion, participated in by six regiments,
came to a glorious close last evening. There were thousands
of people present. The city was gayly decorated with flags
and hunting, while pictures and busts of Col. Ingersoll were
in every show window. From early in the morning until noon,
delegations kept coming in, A special train arrived from
Peoria at 10.50 o'clock, bearing a large delegation of old
soldiers together with Col. Ingersoll and his daughter Maud.
He was met by the reception committee, and marched up the
street escorted by an army of veterans. When he arrived on
the west side of the public square, the lines were opened,
and he marched between, in review of his old friends and
comrades. The parade started as soon as it could be formed,
after the arrival of the special train.
Col. Ingersoll was greeted by a salute of thirteen guns from
Peoria's historic cannon, as he was escorted to the grand
stand by Spencer's band and the Peoria Veterans.
The reviewing stand was on the west side of the park. Here
the parade was seen by Col. Ingersoll and the other
distinguished guests, among whom were Congressmen Graff and
Prince, Mayor Day, Judges N. E. Worthington and I. C.
Pinkney, and the Hon. Clark E. Carr, who also made a speech
saying that the people cannot estimate the majesty of the
eloquence of Col. Robert G. Ingersoll, keeping alive the
flame of patriotism from 1860 to the present time. .
The parade was an imposing one, there were fully two
thousand five hundred old veterans in line who passed In
review before Col. Ingersoll, each one doffing his hat as he
marched by. The most pleasing feature of the exercises of
the day was the representation of the Living Flag by one
hundred and fifty little girls of Elmwood, at ten o' clock
under the direction of Col. Lem. H. Wiley, of Peoria. The
flag was presented on a large Inclined amphitheatre at the
left of the grand stand, and was the finest thing ever
witnessed lu this part of the country.
Following the presentation of the Living Flag, Chairman
Brown called the Reunion to order, and Col. Lem. H. Wiley,
National Bugler gave the assembly call.
Following the assembly call a male chorus rendered a song,
"Ring O Bells." The song was composed for the occasion by
Mr. E. R. Brown and was as follows:
"Welcome now that leader fearless,
Free of thought and grand of brain,
King of hearts and speaker peerless,
Hail our Ingersoll again." ***
Then Chairman, E. R. Brown, took charge of the meeting and
introduced Col. Ingersoll as the greatest of living orators,
referring to the time that the Colonel declared, a quarter
of a century ago, in Rouse's Hall, Peoria, that from that
time forth there would be one free man in Illinois, and
expressing Indebtedness to him for what had been done since
for the freedom and happiness of mankind, by his mighty
brain, his great spirit and his gentle heart.
He then spoke of Col. Ingersoll's residence in Peoria
county, paying an eloquent tribute to him, and concluded by
leading the distinguished gentleman to the front of the
stand. The appearance of Col. Ingersoll was a signal for a
mighty shout, which was heartily joined in by everybody
present, even the little girls composing the living flag,
cheering and waving their banners.
It was fully ten minutes before the cheering had subsided,
and when Col. Ingersoll commenced to speak it was renewed
and he was forced to wait for several minutes more. When
quiet was restored, he opened his address, and for an hour
and a half he held the vast audience spell-bound with his
eloquence and wit.
After Col. Ingersoll's speech the veterans crowded around
the stand to meet and grasp the hand of their comrade, and
the boys of the Eleventh Illinois Cavalry, his old regiment,
were especially profuse in their congratulations and thanks
for the splendid address he had delivered. His speeeh was
off-hand, only occasional reference being made to his short
notes. The Colonel then left the Park amid the yells of
delight of the old soldiers, every man of whom endeavored to
grasp his hand.
In the afternoon the veterans assembled in Liberty Hall by
themselves, the room being filled. Col. Ingersoll appeared
and was greeted with such cheers as he had not received
during the entire day. He then said good-bye to his old
comrades.--Chicago Inter-ocean and Peoria papers, Sept. 6th,
1896.
Elmwood, Ills.
1895.
LADIES and Gentlemen, Fellow-citizens, Old Friends and Comrades:
It gives me the greatest pleasure to meet again those with whom I became
acquainted in the morning of my life. It is now afternoon. The sun of
life is slowly sinking in the west, and, as the evening comes, nothing
can be more delightful than to see again the faces that I knew in youth.
When first I knew you the hair was brown; it is now white. The lines
were not quite so deep, and the eyes were not quite so dim. Mingled with
this pleasure is sadness,--sadness for those who have passed away--for
the dead.
And yet I am not sure that we ought to mourn for the dead. I do not know
which is better--life or death. It may be that death is the greatest
gift that ever came from nature's open hands. We do not know.
There is one thing of which I am certain, and that is, that if we could
live forever here, we would care nothing for each other. The fact
that we must die, the fact that the feast must end, brings our souls
together, and treads the weeds from out the paths between our hearts.
And so it may be, after all, that love is a little flower that grows
on the crumbling edge of the grave. So it may be, that were it not
for death there would be no love, and without love all life would be a
curse.
I say it gives me great pleasure to meet you once again; great pleasure
to congratulate you on your good fortune--the good fortune of being a
citizen of the first and grandest republic ever established upon the
face of the earth.
That is a royal fortune. To be an heir of all the great and brave men
of this land, of all the good, loving and patient women; to be in
possession of the blessings that they have given, should make every
healthy citizen of the United States feel like a millionaire.
This, to-day, is the most prosperous country on the globe; and it is
something to be a citizen of this country.
It is well, too, whenever we meet, to draw attention to what has been
done by our ancestors. It is well to think of them and to thank them for
all their work, for all their courage, for all their toil.
Three hundred years ago our country was a vast wilderness, inhabited by
a few savages. Three hundred years ago--how short a time; hardly a tick
of the great clock of eternity--three hundred years; not a second in the
life even of this planet--three hundred years ago, a wilderness; three
hundred years ago, inhabited by a few savages; three hundred years ago
a few men in the Old World, dissatisfied, brave and adventurous, trusted
their lives to the sea and came to this land.
In 1776 there were only three millions of people all told. These men
settled on the shores of the sea. These men, by experience, learned to
govern themselves. These men, by experience, found that a man should
be respected in the proportion that he was useful. They found, by
experience, that titles were of no importance; that the real thing was
the man, and that the real things in the man were heart and brain. They
found, by experience, how to govern themselves, because there was nobody
else here when they came. The gentlemen who had been in the habit of
governing their fellow-men staid at home, and the men who had been in
the habit of being governed came here, and, consequently, they had to
govern themselves.
And finally, educated by experience, by the rivers and forests, by the
grandeur and splendor of nature, they began to think that this continent
should not belong to any other; that it was great enough to count one,
and that they had the intelligence and manhood to lay the foundations of
a nation.
It would be impossible to pay too great and splendid a tribute to the
great and magnificent souls of that day. They saw the future. They saw
this country as it is now, and they endeavored to lay the foundation
deep; they endeavored to reach the bed-rock of human rights, the
bed-rock of justice. And thereupon they declared that all men were born
equal; that all the children of nature had at birth the same rights, and
that all men had the right to pursue the only good,--happiness.
And what did they say? They said that men should govern men; that the
power to govern should come from the consent of the governed, not
from the clouds, not from some winged phantom of the air, not from the
aristocracy of ether. They said that this power should come from
men; that the men living in this world should govern it, and that the
gentlemen who were dead should keep still.
They took another step, and said that church and state should forever be
divorced. That is no harm to real religion. It never was, because real
religion means the doing of justice; real religion means the giving to
others every right you claim for yourself; real religion consists in
duties of man to man, in feeding the hungry, in clothing the naked, in
defending the innocent, and in saying what you believe to be true.
Our fathers had enough sense to say that, and a man to do that in 1776
had to be a pretty big fellow. It is not so much to say it now, because
they set the example; and, upon these principles of which I have spoken,
they fought the war of the Revolution.
At no time, probably, were the majority of our forefathers in favor
of independence, but enough of them were on the right side, and they
finally won a victory. And after the victory, those that had not been
even in favor of independence became, under the majority rule, more
powerful than the heroes of the Revolution.
Then it was that our fathers made a mistake. We have got to praise them
for what they did that was good, and we will mention what they did that
was wrong.
They forgot the principles for which they fought. They forgot the
sacredness of human liberty, and, in the name of freedom, they made a
mistake and put chains on the limbs of others.
That was their error; that was the poison that entered the American
blood; that was the corrupting influence that demoralized presidents
and priests; that was the influence that corrupted the United States of
America.
That mistake, of course, had to be paid for, as all mistakes in nature
have to be paid for. And not only do you pay for your mistake itself,
but you pay at least ten per cent, compound interest. Whenever you do
wrong, and nobody finds it out, do not imagine you have gotten over it;
you have not. Nature knows it.
The consequences of every bad act are the invisible police that no
prayers can soften, and no gold can bribe.
Recollect that. Recollect, that for every bad act, there will be laid
upon your shoulder the arresting hand of the consequences; and it is
precisely the same with a nation as it is with an individual. You have
got to pay for all of your mistakes, and you have got to pay to the
uttermost farthing. That is the only forgiveness known in nature. Nature
never settles unless she can give a receipt in full.
I know a great many men differ with me, and have all sorts of bankruptcy
systems, but Nature is not built that way.
Finally, slavery took possession of the Government. Every man who wanted
an office had to be willing to step between a fugitive slave and his
liberty.
Slavery corrupted the courts, and made judges decide that the child born
in the State of Pennsylvania, whose mother had been a slave, could not
be free.
That was as infamous a decision as was ever rendered, and yet the
people, in the name of the law, did this thing, and the Supreme Court of
the United States did not know right from wrong.
These dignified gentlemen thought that labor could be paid by lashes on
the back--which was a kind of legal tender--and finally an effort was
made to subject the new territory--the Nation--to the institution of
slavery.
Then we had a war with Mexico, in which we got a good deal of glory and
one million square miles of land, but little honor. I will admit that we
got but little honor out of that war. That territory they wanted to give
to the slaveholder.
In 1803 we purchased from Napoleon the Great, one million square miles
of land, and then, in 1821, we bought Florida from Spain. So that, when
the war came, we had about three million square miles of new land. The
object was to subject all this territory to slavery.
The idea was to go on and sell the babes from their mothers until time
should be no more. The idea was to go on with the branding-iron and the
whip. The idea was to make it a crime to teach men, human beings,
to read and write; to make every Northern man believe that he was a
bulldog, a bloodhound to track down men and women, who, with the light
of the North Star in their eyes, were seeking the free soil of Great
Britain.
Yes, in these times we had lots of mean folks. Let us remember that.
And all at once, under the forms of law, under the forms of our
Government, the greatest man under the flag was elected President. That
man was Abraham Lincoln. And then it was that those gentlemen of the
South said: "We will not be governed by the majority; we will be a law
unto ourselves."
And let me tell you here to-day--I am somewhat older than I used to be;
I have a little philosophy now that I had not at the nine o'clock in the
morning portion of my life--and I do not blame anybody. I do not blame
the South; I do not blame the Confederate soldier.
She--the South--was the fruit of conditions. She was born to
circumstances stronger than herself; and do you know, according to my
philosophy, (which is not quite orthodox), every man and woman in the
whole world are what conditions have made them.
So let us have some sense. The South said, "We will not submit; this is
not a nation, but a partnership of States." I am willing to go so far as
to admit that the South expressed the original idea of the Government.
But now the question was, to whom did the newly acquired property
belong? New States had been carved out of that territory; the soil of
these States had been purchased with the money of the Republic, and had
the South the right to take these States out of the Republic? That was
the question.
The great West had another interest, and that was that no enemy, no
other nation, should control the mouth of the Mississippi. I regard
the Mississippi River as Nature's protest against secession. The old
Mississippi River says, and swears to it, that this country shall be
one, now and forever.
What was to be done? The South said, "We will never remain," and the
North said, "You shall not go." It was a little slow about saying it,
it is true. Some of the best Republicans in the North said, "Let it go."
But the second, sober thought of the great North said, "No, this is our
country and we are going to keep it on the map of the world."
And some who had been Democrats wheeled into line, and hundreds and
thousands said, "This is our country," and finally, when the Government
called for volunteers, hundreds and thousands came forward to offer
their services. Nothing more sublime was ever seen in the history of
this world.
I congratulate you to-day that you live in a country that furnished the
greatest army that ever fought for human liberty in any country round
the world. I want you to know that. I want you to know that the North,
East and West furnished the greatest army that ever fought for human
liberty. I want you to know that Gen. Grant commanded more men, men
fighting for the right, not for conquest, than any other general who
ever marshaled the hosts of war.
Let us remember that, and let us be proud of it. The millions who poured
from the North for the defence of the flag--the story of their heroism
has been told to you again and again. I have told it myself many times.
It is known to every intelligent man and woman in the world. Everybody
knows how much we suffered. Everybody knows how we poured out money like
water; how we spent it like leaves of the forest. Everybody knows how
the brave blood was shed. Everybody knows the story of the great, the
heroic struggle, and everybody knows that at last victory came to our
side, and how the last sword of the Rebellion was handed to Gen. Grant.
There is no need to tell that story again.
But the question now, as we look back, is, was this country worth
saving? Was the blood shed in vain? Were the lives given for naught?
That is the question.
This country, according to my idea, is the one success of the world. Men
here have more to eat, more to wear, better houses, and, on the average,
a better education than those of any other nation now living, or any
that has passed away.
Was the country worth saving?
See what we have done in this country since 1860. We were not much of a
people then, to be honor bright about it. We were carrying, in the great
race of national life, the weight of slavery, and it poisoned us; it
paralyzed our best energies; it took from our politics the best minds;
it kept from the bench the greatest brains.
But what have we done since 1860, since we really became a free people,
since we came to our senses, since we have been willing to allow a man
to express his honest thoughts on every subject?
Do you know how much good we did? The war brought men together from
every part of the country and gave them an opportunity to compare their
foolishness. It gave them an opportunity to throw away their prejudices,
to find that a man who differed with them on every subject might be the
very best of fellows. That is what the war did. We have been broadening
ever since.
I sometimes have thought it did men good to make the trip to California
in 1849. As they went over the plains they dropped their prejudices on
the way. I think they did, and that's what killed the grass.
But to come back to my question, what have we done since 1860?
From 1860 to 1880, in spite of the waste of war, in spite of all the
property destroyed by flame, in spite of all the waste, our profits were
one billion three hundred and seventy-four million dollars. Think of it!
From 1860 to 1880! That is a vast sum.
From 1880 to 1890 our profits were two billion one hundred and
thirty-nine million dollars.
Men may talk against wealth as much as they please; they may talk about
money being the root of all evil, but there is little real happiness in
this world without some of it. It is very handy when staying at home
and it is almost indispensable when you travel abroad. Money is a good
thing. It makes others happy; it makes those happy whom you love, and
if a man can get a little together, when the night of death drops the
curtain upon him, he is satisfied that he has left a little to keep the
wolf from the door of those who, in life, were dear to him. Yes, money
is a good thing, especially since special providence has gone out of
business.
I can see to-day something beyond the wildest dream of any patriot who
lived fifty years ago. The United States to-day is the richest nation
on the face of the earth. The old nations of the world, Egypt, India,
Greece, Rome, every one of them, when compared with this great Republic,
must be regarded as paupers.
How much do you suppose this Nation is worth to-day? I am talking about
land and cattle, products, manufactured articles and railways. Over
seventy thousand million dollars. Just think of it.
Take a thousand dollars and then take nine hundred and ninety-nine
thousand; so you will have one thousand piles of one thousand each. That
makes only a million, and yet the United States today is worth seventy
thousand millions. This is thirty-five percent, more than Great Britain
is worth.
We are a great Nation. We have got the land. This land was being made
for many millions of years. Its soil was being made by the great lakes
and rivers, and being brought down from the mountains for countless
ages.
This continent was standing like a vast pan of milk, with the cream
rising for millions of years, and we were the chaps that got there when
the skimming commenced.
We are rich, and we ought to be rich. It is our own fault if we are not.
In every department of human endeavor, along every path and highway,
the progress of the Republic has been marvelous, beyond the power of
language to express.
Let me show you: In 1860 the horse-power of all the engines, the
locomotives and the steamboats that traversed the lakes and rivers--the
entire power--was three million five hundred thousand. In 1890 the
horse-power of engines and locomotives and steamboats was over seventeen
million.
Think of that and what it means! Think of the forces at work for the
benefit of the United States, the machines doing the work of thousands
and millions of men!
And remember that every engine that puffs is puffing for you; every road
that runs is running for you. I want you to know that the average man
and woman in the United States to-day has more of the conveniences of
life than kings and queens had one hundred years ago.
Yes, we are getting along.
In 1860 we used one billion eight hundred million dollars' worth
of products, of things manufactured and grown, and we sent to other
countries two hundred and fifty million dollars' worth.
In 1893 we used three billion eighty-nine million dollars' worth, and
we sent to other countries six hundred and fifty-four million dollars'
worth.
You see, these vast sums are almost inconceivable. There is not a
man to-day with brains large enough to understand these figures; to
understand how many cars this money put upon the tracks, how much coal
was devoured by the locomotives, how many men plowed and worked in the
fields, how many sails were given to the wind, how many ships crossed
the sea.
I tell you, there is no man able to think of the ships that were built,
the cars that were made, the mines that were opened, the trees that were
felled--no man has imagination enough to grasp the meaning of it all. No
man has any conception of the sea till he crosses it. I knew nothing of
how broad this country is until I went over it in a slow train.
Since 1860 the productive power of the United States has more than
trebled.
I like to talk about these things, because they mean good houses,
carpets on the floors, pictures on the walls, some books on the shelves.
They mean children going to school with their stomachs full of good
food, prosperous men and proud mothers.
All my life I have taken a much deeper interest in what men produce than
in what nature does. I would rather see the prairies, with the oats and
the wheat and the waving corn, and the schoolhouse, and hear the thrush
sing amid the happy homes of prosperous men and women--I would rather
see these things than any range of mountains in the world. Take it as
you will, a mountain is of no great value.
In 1860 our land was worth four billion five hundred million dollars; in
1890 it was worth fourteen billion dollars.
In 1860 all the railroads in the United States were worth four hundred
million dollars, now they are worth a little less than ten thousand
million dollars.