The Following Words of Matchless Eloquence were
Addressed by Col. Ingersoll to the Veteran
Soldiers of Indianapolis.
The past, as it were, rises before me like a dream. Again we are in the
great struggle for national life. We hear the sound of preparation--the
music of the boisterous drums--the silver voices of heroic bugles. We
see thousands of assemblages, and hear the appeals of orators; we see
the pale cheeks of women, and the flushed faces of men; and in those
assemblages we see all the dead whose dust we have covered with flowers.
We lose sight of them no more. We are with them when they enlist in the
great army of freedom. We see them part with those they love. Some are
walking for the last time in quiet, woody places with the maidens they
adore. We hear the whisperings and the sweet vows of eternal love as
they lingeringly part forever. Others are bending over cradles kissing
babes that are asleep.
Some are receiving the blessings of old men. Some are parting with
mothers who hold them and press them to their hearts again and again,
and say nothing; and some are talking with wives, and endeavoring with
brave words spoken in the old tones to drive away the awful fear. We
see them part. We see the wife standing in the door with the babe in her
arms--standing in the sunlight sobbing--at the turn of the road a hand
waves--she answers by holding high in her loving hands the child. He is
gone, and forever.
We see them all as they march proudly away under the flaunting flags,
keeping time to the wild music of war--marching down the streets of the
great cities--through the towns and across the prairies--down to the
fields of glory, and do and to die for the eternal right.
We go with them one and all. We are by their side on all the gory
fields, in all the hospitals of pain--on all the weary marches. We stand
guard with them in the wild storm and under the quiet stars. We are with
them in ravines running with blood--in the furrows of old fields. We are
with them between contending hosts, unable to move, wild with thirst,
the life ebbing slowly away among the withered leaves. We see them
pierced by balls and torn with shells in the trenches of forts, and in
the whirlwind of the charge, where men become iron with nerves of steel.
We are with them in the prisons of hatred and famine, but human speech
can never tell what they endured.
We are at home when the news comes that they are dead. We see the maiden
in the shadow of her sorrow. We see the silvered head of the old man
bowed with the last grief.
The past rises before us, and we see four millions of human beings
governed by the lash--we see them bound hand and foot--we hear the
strokes of cruel whips--we see the hounds tracking women through
tangled swamps. We see babes sold from the breasts of mothers. Cruelty
unspeakable! Outrage infinite!
Four million bodies in chains--four million souls in fetters. All the
sacred relations of wife, mother, father and child trampled beneath the
brutal feet of might. All this was done under our own beautiful banner
of the free.
The past rises before us. We hear the roar and shriek of the bursting
shell. The broken fetters fall. There heroes died. We look. Instead of
slaves we see men and women and children. The wand of progress touches
the auction-block, the slave-pen, and the whipping-post, and we see
homes and firesides, and school-houses and books, and where all was want
and crime, and cruelty and fear, we see the faces of the free.
These heroes are dead. They died for liberty--they died for us. They
are at rest, They sleep in the land they made free, under the flag
they rendered stainless, under the solemn pines, the sad hemlocks, the
tearful willows, the embracing vines. They sleep beneath the shadows of
the clouds, careless alike of sunshine or storm, each in the window-less
palace of rest. Earth may run red with other wars--they are at peace. In
the midst of battle, in the roar of conflict, they found the serenity of
death. I have one sentiment for the soldiers living and dead--cheers for
the living and tears for the dead.