[The following is a summary of Mr. Brann's address to
the United American Veterans, San Antonio, Feb. 22, 1894.]
It occurs to me that the time is not an appropriate one
for lengthy speeches. This is a love-feast, and I have
noticed that when people are much in love they are little
inclined to talk. Perhaps I have been called upon because
I'm a professional peacemaker, an expert harmony promoter.
Were I not as meek as Moses and patient as Job I
certainly would weary in well-doing--become discouraged
and give o'er the attempt to inaugurate an era of
universal peace and general good will; for when I go North
I am denounced by the partisan press as an unreconstructed
rebel seeking to rip the federal government up by
the roots, and when I come South I'm pointed out as a
dangerous Yankee importation with the bluest of equators.
The Democrats insist that I'm a Republican, but that
party declines the responsibility; the infidels call me a
religious crank, the clergy an Atheist, and even the
Mugwumps regard me with suspicion. But let me tell you right
here that whatever I may or may not be, I am an American
from the ground up--from Alpha to Omega, world-without-
end. I may be a man without a party and without
a creed; but so long as Old Glory blazes in God's blue
firmament I will never be a man without a country.
I can no more imagine a man loving only the north or
south half of his country than I can imagine him loving
only the right or left side of his wife. If I had to love my
country on the instalment plan I'd move out of it. The
man who is really a patriot loves his country in a lump.
There's room in his heart for every acre of its sunny soil,
its every hill upon which the morning breaks, its every
vale that cradles the evening shadows, its every stream
that laughs back the image of the sun.
When a man feels that way you can safely trust him
with an office--and most of us are perfectly willing to
be trusted.
As an American citizen I am proud of every man, of
whatever section, who, by the nobility of his nature or the
majesty of his intellect, has added one jot or tittle to the
fame of his fair land, has increased the credit of our common
country, has contributed new power to the car of
human progress. They are my countrymen, friends and
brethren. Are you of the North? Then I claim with you
a joint interest in your entire galaxy of intellectual gods.
At the shrine of Lincoln's broad humanity, of Webster's
matchless power, of the cunning genius of your Menlo
wizard I humbly bow. Are you of the South? Your Jefferson,
Jackson and Lee are mine as well as thine, for they
too were Americans--lords in that mighty aristocracy
of intellect that has, in four generations, made the New
World the wonder of the Old with its cumulative greatness
of forty centuries.
I have watched the progress of the United American
Veterans' Association with uncommon interest, because it
is distinctively a national organization, in which shriveled
sectionalism and party prejudice find no place. Its corner-
stone is American manhood, its object fraternity, its
principles broad as the continent upon which falls the shadow
of our flag. Do you know what that association means?
--had you thought of its significance? It means that
when brave men sheathe the sword the quarrel's done. It
means that peace hath its triumphs no less than war.
The world's annals furnish forth no parallel to that association
whose guests we are to-night. Men have fought ere
this and patched up a peace; but where, in all the cycles
of human history, have they waged war more relentless
than did Rome and Carthage, then, without a murmur,
accepted the arbitrament of the sword and swung into line,
shoulder to shoulder, a band of brothers, one flag, one
country, one destiny and that the highest goal of human
endeavor?
My attention has been especially attracted to this
association because it is a practical illustration of what I have
so often urged in print: That the pitiful sectional prejudices
which we see here and there coming to the surface
both north and south; that the petty hatreds, which
appear to transform some hearts into bitter little pools in
which Justice perishes and divine Reason is quite overthrown,
have no lot or part among the soldiers who made
the civil war the grandest event in modern history--one
from which the world will mark time for centuries yet to
be. I have yet to hear an ex-federal who met Lee's
veterans at the Wilderness or Gettysburg, speak
disrespectfully of the man who wore the gray. I have yet to
hear an ex-confederate who mixed it with "Old Pap"
Thomas at Chickamauga, or Joe Hooker above the clouds,
speak disparagingly of those who wore the blue. It is
those who stayed at home to sing, "We'll hang Jeff Davis
on a sour apple tree," and those who damned "Old Abe"
Lincoln at long range who are doing all the tremendous
fighting now. They didn't get started for the front until
after Appomattox; but having once sailed in for slaughter
all Hades can't head 'em off! If a merciful Providence
doesn't soon interpose, these mighty post-bellum warriors
will either break a lung or wreck the majestic world. They
are more dreadful in their destructive awfulness than the
farmer's two he-goats, that "fit an' fit" until there was
nothing left of 'em but a splotch o' blood and two
belligerent tails. Those who exchanged compliments at
Corinth and Cold Harbor; those who received informal
calls from Kilpatrick's cavalry, who we are told "rode like
centaurs and fought like devils"; those who saw Grant's
intrepid Westerners hurl themselves against Vicksburg's
impregnable heights; those who were slammed up against
Jackson's "Stone wall" or picnicked with Johnston's
cartridge-biters on grapeshot pie and deviled minnie balls,
now treat each other with the studied respect which the
Kansas farmer paid the cyclone. He felt sure that the
Lord was on his side and that with such help he could
more than hold his own; still he was in no wise anxious to
steer his theory against a condition that was making a
million revolutions a minute and hadn't yet brought up its
reserves.
In commingling thus in a common brotherhood, those
who followed the fortunes of the confederacy until human
fortitude could no further go, and those who, with the
sword's keen point, held every gleaming star in Old Glory's
field of blue, are furnishing a commendable example to all
our countrymen, to all humanity. It is an echo, nay, an
incarnation of those words of Grant, the grandest that
ever fell from victorious warrior's lips: "Let us have
peace." The battlefield was sown long since with kindlier
seed than dragon's teeth, has blossomed and borne the
fruits of Life where Death reigned paramount. The
flowers of our Southern fields are no longer dyed with the
blood of the contending brave, but drip with heaven's own
dews; the sullen battery has gone silent on our purple
hills and the crash of steel resounds no more amid our
pleasant valleys. No longer the Northern child waits
and watches for the soldier sire whose lips have felt the
touch of God's own hand; no longer the Southern woman
wanders with bursting heart amid the wreck and wraith
of the fierce simoon, brushing the battle grime from cold
brows, seeking among the mangled dead for all that life
held dear. The curse has passed: "Let us have peace."
The civil war was a national necessity. It was the fiery
furnace in which Almighty God welded the discordant
elements of the New World into one homogeneous people.
For generations the Puritan hated the Cavalier, and the
latter gave back scorn for scorn and added compound
interest. This mutual dislike was a rank, infectious weed
that first took root across the sea and ripened into that
revolution which sent Charles the First to the block and
invested Cromwell with more than regal power. Some of
this virus, distilled in stubborn hearts by religious and
political intolerance, was carried by the Puritan to Plymouth
and by the Cavalier to the banks of the James, and
it survived even the fires of patriotism and the frosts of
Valley Forge. Bone of the same bone and flesh of the
same flesh, the religio-political doctrinaires had succeeded
in casting our forefathers in different molds--each colossal,
masculine, heroic, but radically antagonistic. Together
they followed Washington through those eight long
years of blood and tears of which human liberty was born.
Together they laid broad and deep the foundation of the
Republic and reared thereon that wondrous superstructure
which--please God--shall endure forever, and together
they poured their blood in one unstinted tide upon its
sacred shrine. But the Puritan was still a Cromwell
and the Cavalier a lord. That people so widely divergent
in customs and character could long dwell at peace as one
political household were preposterous. The one had his
"convictions," the other his "institutions," and neither
would yield the right-o'-way. When such opposing trains
of thought try to pass on a single track there's going to
be trouble sure. The friction, evident even in the early
day of the Republic, grew and gathered fire until the nation
burst forth in that mighty conflagration whose pathetic
ashes repose in a million sepulchers. It had to come. Let
us thank God that the fierce baptism of fire is in the past
and not yet to be; that the bitter cup can never be pressed
to our children's lips; that never again while the world
stands and the heavens endure will Americans meet in battle-
shock! that never again will our rivers run red with
the blood of Columbia's brave, poured forth by her own
keen blade--that the last stumbling-block hath been
removed from our path of progress; that we can now move
forward with a giant's stride to that high destiny for
which the chastening hand of God hath fitted us, the
greatest nation and the grandest people in all the mighty
tide of Time!
I rejoice to see the veterans setting the example of
reconciliation, for they, more than all others, have most
to forgive and forget. I am doubly gratified that the
good work should have begun in Texas, which has such
cause to entertain the kindliest feeling toward every
section of our common country, for each and all contributed
to her past glory and present greatness. Among those
who cast their lot in Texas when every step was a challenge
to destiny and every hour was darkened by a danger;
who faced unflinchingly the trials of frontier life and
carved out an independent republic with the sword, were
men from every State of the American union. One instance
will suffice (though scores might be cited) to illustrate
the cosmopolitan character of that band of heroes
who made the early history of Texas one of the noblest
cantos in the mighty Anglo-Saxon epic. The New Orleans
Grays was the first military company to come from
the States to the aid of the struggling Texans. It got its
first baptism of fire in this city, being a part of that band
of 300 Spartans who followed Old Ben Milam to attack
General Cos and his 1,500 veterans. From the roster of
the Grays I learn that the company numbered but sixty-
four men, yet represented sixteen sovereign States and six
foreign countries! Think of it! Twenty-five came from
north of the Ohio, twenty-four from the Southern States,
fourteen across far seas to fight for Texas liberty, while
one brave lad came from God knows where, but he got
there just the same! General Cos never inquired where
Milam's men were born. He knew where his own were
dying, decided that San Antonio had been overrated as a
health resort and took to the chaparral.
As most of those daring spirits who flocked hither to
fight for Texas remained, and ever since a steady human
tide has poured in from all parts of the Union, and every
country of Western Europe, we have become a mixed people,
scarce daring to throw a rock in any direction lest
we hit our relatives. And the cosmopolitan character of
our people--the fact that the Puritan and the Cavalier
have blended here as nowhere else--will be found a powerful
factor in the attainment of a glorious future.
It is particularly appropriate that the Blue and the
Gray should unite in observing the day that marks the
birth of Washington, that soldier-statesman who marshalled
our fathers under one flag and led them forth to the
defense of human liberty. Whatever may have since mis-
chanced, the trials and the triumphs of the Revolution are
our common heritage. As the Greeks of old, divided
among themselves, united to face a foreign foe, so did the
American, North and South, unite beneath the banner of
Washington and hurl down the gage of battle to Britain's
mighty power, and no historian has yet presumed to say
which was the better soldier. Washington belongs to no
section. He was truly an American, pre-eminently a
patriot. The nobility of his character was his very own;
the dazzling splendor of his undying fame is the brightest
jewel in Columbia's crown of glory, for it was born of the
dauntless valor and nurtured with the priceless blood of
a people whom kings could not conquer nor sophists deceive.
A husband and wife, long estranged, met at the grave of
their firstborn, the child of their youthful strength. Their
strife had been bitter, their love had turned to hate, and
they elected to tread life's path apart. They stood, one
on either side, and looked coldly upon each other. Then
they looked down upon the little mound that held the
broken link with which God had bound their hearts. They
knelt and bowed their faces upon the cold sod that covered
the sacred dust of their dead. They stretched forth
their hands across the little grave, each to the other, and
the Angel of God washed all the bitterness of the years
from their hearts with a rain of penitential tears, and
sent them down life's pathway hand-in-hand, as in the old
days when Love was lord of their two lives and the lost
babe was cradled upon its mother's breast.
This day the North and the South kneel at the grave
of Washington, their best beloved. The estrangement is
forgotten, the bitterness of the years passes like an uneasy
dream, they reach their hands each to the other across
the tomb, and the benediction of God falls upon a re-
united people.
* * *
HUMBUGS AND HUMBUGGERY.