The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll Volume IX Part 24

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 pa.s.sed 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 a.s.sembly call.

Following the a.s.sembly 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 a.s.sembled 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 pa.s.sed 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 sh.o.r.es 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 t.i.tles 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 n.o.body 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 n.o.body 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 inst.i.tution 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 circ.u.mstances 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.