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SECOND EDITION. SIXTH THOUSAND.________
------ =—7—-
=
MR. CHAS. BRADLAUGH, referring to this Orat.icrth. ¿fy
says in the National Reformer of J uly 2nd, 1882 ¡-MJ». "L
“As a sample of eloquence it should be read by evRf^.. <4 •.
admirer of fine clear oratory.
*
<$
<0 ¿X. •
NATIONALSECtJLARSOCIETY
nJ
COL. INGERSOLL’S
LONDON:
Printed at the Paine Press, 8, Finsbury-street, e.c.
1882
Price One Penny.
i
�( 2 )
-Ht IJ'i’FRODUC’FISjV.
ECORATION DAY, the occasion upon which the following
Oration was delivered in June, 1882, is a national commemora
tion of the dead heroes of America, of the men who fought and died
for the great republic. It is observed throughout the country, and
the tombs of the departed great ones are decked with flowers and
other symbols of remembrance and respect. Col. Ingersoll, whose
fame as an orator is world-wide, was requested to deliver the com
memorative discourse. The Colonel accepted the honorable post, and
the oration given below was the result. The Academy of Music was
thronged on the evening of Decoration Day. The gay dresses of the
ladies and the bright uniforms of military men gave the audience a
brilliant appearance. The Academy was profusely decorated with
flags. Amidst thunders of applause, Colonel Ingersoll advanced to
the reading desk, and delivered the
ORATION.
'T'IIIS day is sacred to our heroes dead. Upon their tombs we hav
A lovingly laid the wealth of spring.
This is a day for memory and tears. A mighty nation bends above
its honored grave and pays to noble dust the tribute of its love.
Gratitude is the fairest flower that sheds its perfume in the heart.
To-day we tell the history of oui' country’s life—-recount the lofty
deeds, of vanished years—the toil and suffering, the defeats and
victories of heroic men—of men who made our nation great and free.
We see the first ships whose prows were gilded by the Western
sun. We feel the thrill of discovery when the new world was found.
We see the oppressed, the serf, the peasant, and the slavemen whose
flesh had known the chill of chains—the adventurous, the proud, the
brave, sailing an unknown sea, seeking homes in unknown lands.
We see the settlements, the little clearings, the block-house, and
the fort, the rude and lonely huts. Brave men, true women, builders
of homes, fellers of forests, founders of states !
Separated from the Old World—away from the heartless distinctions
of caste—away from sceptres, and titles, and crowns, they governed
themselves. They defended their homes, they earned them bread.
Each citizen had a voice, and the little villages became almost
republics.
Slowly the savage was driven, foot by foot, back in the dim forest.
The days and nights were filled with fear, and the slow years with
massacre and war, and cabins' earthen floors were wet with blood of
mothers and their babes.
But the savages of the New World were kinder than the kings and
nobles of the Old ; and so the human tide kept coming, and the
places of the dead were filled.
�( 3 )
Amid common dangers and common hopes, the prejudices and
feuds of Europe faded slowly from their hearts. From every land,
of every speech, driven by want and lured by hope, exiles and
emigrants sought the mysterious continent of the West.
Year after year the colonists fought and toiled, and suffered and
increased.
They began to talk about liberty—to reason of the rights of man.
They asked no help from distant kings, and they began to doubt the
use of paying tribute to the useless. They lost respects for dukes
and lords, and held in high esteem all honest men.
There was the dawn of a new day. They began to dream of in
dependence. They found that they could make and execute the laws.
They had tried the experiment of self-government. They had
succeeded. The Old World wished to dominate the New. In the
care and keeping of the colonists was the destiny of this continent—
of half the world.
On this day the story of the great struggle between colonists and
kings should be told. We should tell our children of the contest—
first for justice, then for freedom. We should tell them the history
of the Declaration of Independence—the chart and compass of all
human rights—that all men are equal, and have the right of life,
liberty, and joy.
This Declaration uncrowned kings, and wrested from the hands of
titled tyranny the sceptre of usurped and arbitrary power. It super
seded royal grants, and repealed the cruel statutes of a thousand
years. It gave the peasant a career; it knighted all the sons of toil;
it opened all the paths to fame, and put the star of hope above the
cradle of the poor man’s babe.
England was then the mightiest of nations—mistress of every sea—
and yet our fathers, poor and few, defied her power.
To-day we remember the defeats, the victories, the disasters, the
weary marches, the poverty, the hunger, the sufferings, the agonies,
and, above all, the glories of the Revolution. We remember all—
from Lexington to Valley Forge, and from that midnight of despair
to Yorktown's cloudless day.
We remember the soldiers and thinkers—the heroes of the sword
and pen. They had the brain and heart, the wisdom and the courage
to utter and defend these words, “Governments derive their just
powers from the consent of the governed.”
In defence of this sublime and self-evident truth the war was waged
and won.
To-day we remember all the heroes, all the generous and chivalric
men who came from other lands to make ours free.
Of the many thousands who shared the gloom and glory of the
seven sacred years, not one remains. The last has mingled with the
earth, and nearly all are sleeping now in unmarked graves, and some
beneath the leaning, crumbling stones, from which their names have
been effaced by Time’s irreverent and relentless hands.
But the nation they founded remains. The United States are still
free and independent. The “government derives its just powers
�( 4 )
from the consent of the governed,” and fifty millions of free people
remember with gratitude the heroes of the Revolution.
Let us be truthful; let us be kind. When peace came, when the
independence of a new nation was acknowledged, the great truth for
which our fathers fought was half denied, and the Constitution was
inconsistent with the Declaration. The war was waged for liberty,
and yet the victors forged new fetters for their fellow-men. The
chains our fathers broke were put by them upon the limbs of others.
Freedom for all was the cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night,
through seven years of want and war. In peace the cloud was for
gotten and the pillar blazed unseen.
Let us be truthful; all of our fathers were not true to themselves.
In war, they had been generous, noble, and self-sacrificing ; with
peace came selfishness and greed. They were not great enough to
appreciate the grandeur of the principles for which they fought.
They ceased to regard the great truths as having universal applica
tion. “ Liberty for all ” included only themselves. They qualified
the Declaration. They interpolated the word “ white; ” they obliter
ated the world “all.”
Let us be kind. We will remember the ag-e in which they lived.
We will compare them with the citizens of other nations.
They made merchandise of men. They legalized a crime. They
sowed the seeds of war. But they founded this nation.
Let us gratefully remember.
Let us gratefully forget.
To-day we remember the heroes of the second war with England—
in which our fathers fought for the freedom of the seas, for the rights
of the American sailor.
We remember with pride the splendid victories of Erie and Champ
lain, and the wondrous achievements upon the sea—achievements
that covered our navy with glory that neither the victories nor defeats
of the future can dim.
We remember the heroic services and sufferings of those who
fought the merciless savage of the frontier. We see the midnight
massacre, and hear the war-cries of the allies of England. We see
the flames climb round the happy homes, and in the charred and
blackened ruins we see the mutilated bodies of wives and children.
Peace came at last, crowned with the victory of New Orleans—a
victory that “ did redeem all sorrows ” and all defeats.
The Revolution gave our fathers a free land—the war of 1812 a
free sea.
To-day we remember the gallant men who bore our flag in tri
umph from the Rio Grande to the heights of Chatultepec.
Leaving out of question the justice of our cause—the necessity for
war—we are yet compelled to applaud the marvellous courage of our
troops. A handful of men—brave, impetuous determined, irresist
ible—conquered a nation. Our history has no record of more daring
deeds.
Again peace came, and the nation hoped and thought that strife
was at an end.
oi
�( 5 )
We had grown too powerful to be attacked. Our resources were
boundless, ^and the future seemed secured. The hardy pioneers
moved to the great West. Beneath their ringing strokes the forests
disappeared, and on the prairies waved the billowed.seas of wheat
and corn. The great plains were crossed, the mountains were con
quered, and the foot of victorious adventure pressed the shore of the
Pacific.
In the great north, all the streams went singing to the sea, turning
wheels and spindles, and casting shuttles back and forth. Inventions
were springing like magic from a thousand brains. From laboi s
holy altars rose and leaped the smoke and flame, and from the count
less forges rang the chant of the rhythmic stroke.
But in the South the negro toiled unpaid, and mothers wept while
babes were sold, and at the auction black husbands and wives speech
lessly looked the last good-bye. Fugitives, lighted by the Northern
star, sought liberty on English soil, and were by northern men thrust
back to whip and chain.
The great statesmen, the successful politicians, announced that law
had compromised with crime, that justice had been bribed, and that
time had barred appeal. A race was left without a right, without a
hope. The future had no dawn, no star—nothing but ignorance and
fear, nothing but work and want. This was the conclusion of the
statesman, the philosophy of the politicians—of constitutional ex
pounders. This was decided by courts and ratified by the nation.
We had been successful in three wars. We had wrested thirteen
colonies from Great Britain. We had conquered our place upon the
high seas. We had added more than two millions of square miles to
the national domain. We had increased in population from three to
thirty-one millions. We were in the midst of plenty. We were rich
and free. Ours appeared to be the most prosperous of nations. •
But it was only appearance. The statesmen and the politicians
were deceived. Real victories can be won only for the right. .The
triumph of justice is the only peace. Such is the nature of things.
He who enslaves another cannot be free. He who attacks the right
assaults himself.
The mistake our fathers made had not been corrected. The found
ations of the republic were insecure. The great dome of the temple
was bathed in the light of prosperity, but the corner-stones were
crumbling. Four millions of human beings were enslaved. . Party
cries had been mistaken for principles—partisanship for patriotism,
success for justice.
But pity pointed to the scarred and bleeding backs of slaves;
mercy heard the sobs of mothers reft of babes, and justice held aloft
the scales, in which one drop of blood, shed by a master’s lash out
weighed a nation’s gold.
There were a few men, a few women, who had the courage to. at
tack this monstrous crime. They found it entrenched in constitu
tions, statutes, and decisions, barricaded and bastioned by every
department and by every party. Politicians were its servants, states
men its attorneys, judges its menials, presidents its puppets, and upon
�( 6 )
its cruel altar had been sacrificed our country’s honor.
It was the crime of the nation—of the whole country—North and
South responsible alike.
To-day we reverently thank the abolitionists. Earth has produced
no grander men, no nobler women. They were the real philanthrop
ists, the true patriots.
When the will defies fear, when the heart- applauds the brain, when
duty throws the gauntlet down to fate, when honor scorns to com
promise with death—this is heroism.
The abolitionists were heroes. He loves his country best who
strives to make it best. The bravest men are those who have the
greatest fear of doing wrong.
Mere politicians wish the country to do something for them, true
patriots desire to do something for their country.
Courage without conscience is a wild beast; patriotism without
principle is the prejudice of birth—the animal attachment to place.
These men, these women, had courage and conscience, patriotism
and principle, heart and brain.
The South relied upon the bond—upon a barbarous clause that
stained, disfigured, and defiled the Federal pact—and made the mon
strous claim that- slavery was the nation’s ward. The spot of shame
grew red in Northern cheeks, and Northern men declared that slavery
had poisoned, cursed, and blighted soul and soil enough, and that the
territories must be free.
The radicals of the South cried, “No Union without slavery!”
The radicals of the North replied, “No Union without- liberty!”
The Northern radicals were right. Upon the great issue of free
homes for free men a president was elected by the free states. The
South appealed to the sword, and raised the standard of revolt. For
the first time in history the oppressors rebelled.
But let us to-day be great enough to forget individuals—great
enough to know that slavery was treason, that slavery was rebellion,
that slavery fired upon our flag, and sought to wreck and strand the
mighty ship that bears the hope and fortune of this world.
The first shot liberated the North. Constitutions, statutes, and
decisions, compromises, platforms, and resolutions, made, passed, and
ratified in the interest of slavery, became mere legal lies, mean and
meaningless, base and baseless.
Parchment and paper could no longer stop or stay the onward
march of man. Tire North was free. Millions instantly resolved
that the nation should not die—that freedom should not perish, and
that slavery should not live. Millions of our brothers, our sons, our
fathers, our husbands, answered to the nation’s call.
The great armies have desolated the earth; the greatest soldiers
have been ambition’s dupes. They waged war for the sake of place
and pillage, pomp and power, for the ignorant applause of vulgar
millions, for the flattery of parasites, and t-he adulation of sycophants
and slaves.
Let us proudly remember that in our time the greatest, the
grandest, the noblest army of the world fought—not to enslave, but
�( 7 )
to free ; not to destroy, but to save ; not simply for themselves, but
for others; not for conquest, but for conscience ; not only for us, but
for every land and every race.
With courage, with enthusiasm, with devotion never excelled, with
an exaltation and purity of purpose never equalled, this grand army
fought the battles of the republic. For the preservation of this
nation, for the destruction of slavery, these soldiers, these sailors—on
land and sea-—disheartened by no defeat, discouraged by no obstacle,
appalled by no danger, neither paused nor swerved until a stainless
flag, without a rival, floated over all our wide domain, and until every
human being beneath its folds was absolutely free.
The great victory for human rights-—the greatest of all the years—
had been won ; won by the Union men of the North, by the Union
men of the South, and by those who had been slaves. Liberty was
national—slavery was dead.
The flag for which the heroes fought, for which they died, is the
symbol of all we are, of all we hope to be.
It is the emblem of equal rights.
It means free hands, free lips, self-government, and the sovereign
ty of the individual.
It means that this continent has been dedicated to freedom.
It means universal education—light for every mind, knowledge for
every child.
It means that the school-house is the fortress of liberty.
It means that “ governments derive their just powers from the con
sent of the governed ”—that each man is accountable to and for the
government—-that- responsibility goes hand in hand with liberty.
It means that it is the duty of every citizen to bear his share of the
public burden—to take part in the affairs of his town, his county, his
state, and his country.
It means that the ballot-box is the ark of the covenant—that the
source of authority must not be poisoned.
It means the perpetual right of peaceful revolution.
It means that every citizen of the republic—native or naturalised
—must be protected; at home, in every state ; abroad, in every land,
on every sea.
It means that all distinctions based on birth or blood have perished
from our laws—that our government shall stand between labor and
capital, between the weak and the strong, between the individual and
the corporation, between want and wealth—and give and guarantee
simple justice to each and all.
It means that there shall be a legal remedy for every wrong.
It means national hospitality—that we must welcome to our shores
the exiles of the world, and that we may not drive them back. Some
may be deformed by labor, dwarfed by hunger, broken in spirit, vic
tims of tyranny and caste, in whose sad faces may be read the touch
ing record of a weary life ; and yet their children, born of liberty and
love, will be symmetrical and fair, intelligent and free.
That flag is the emblem of a supreme will-—of a nation’s power.
Beneath its folds the weakest must be protected, and the strongest
must obey.
�It shields and canopies alike the loftiest mansion and the rudest
hut.
That flag was given to the air in the Revolution’s darkest days.
It represents the sufferings of the past, the glories yet to be ; and like
the bow of heaven, it is the child of storm and sun.
This day is sacred to the great heroic host who kept this flag above
our heads—sacred to the living and the dead—sacred to the scarred
and the maimed—sacred to the wives who gave their husbands, to the
mothers who gave their sons.
Here in this peaceful land of ours—here where the sun shmes,
where flowers grow, where children play, millions of armed men
battled for the right, and breasted on a thousand fields the iron storms
of war.
These brave, these incomparable men founded the first republic.
They fulfilled the prophecies; they brought to pass the dreams;
they realized the hopes that all the great and good and wise and just
have made and had since man was man.
But what of those who fell?
There is no language to express the debt we owe, the love we bear,
to all the dead who died for us. Words are but barren sounds. We
can but stand beside their graves, and, in the hush and silence, feel
what speech has never told.
They fought, they died, and for the first time since man has kept
a record of events the heavens bent above and domed a land without
a serf, a servant, or a slave.
NOTICE.
*
*
Read THE REPUBLICAN, Id. monthly, each number containing
Portrait and biography of some well-known reformer.
By G.
a^URT FLUNKEYS: Their “Work” and Wages.
W Standring. An exposure of aristocratic sinecures. Id. 4-. .. „
BiFE of C. BRADLAUGH, M.P., 12 pages, with Portrait &
* autograph. By G. Standring. Id.
LIFE of^tL. INGERSOLL, with Portrait, Autograph, and Extracts
froworks. In neat wrapper, Id.
By orderlhroug^uy nmAvnt; or by post from 8, Finsbury-st., London.
�
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Victorian Blogging
Description
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Title
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Col. Ingersoll's Decoration Day oration, June 1882
Description
An account of the resource
Edition: 2nd ed.
Place of publication: London
Collation: 8 p. ; 18 cm.
Notes: "Printed at the Paine Press, 8 Finsbury-street, E.C." Stamp on front cover: Freethought Publishing Co., Printing Office, 68 Fleet Street, E.C., A. Bonner, Manager. Publisher's advertisements on back cover include The Republican [periodical] and other republican works. Not in Stein checklist, but cf his No. 155. Part of the NSS pamphlet collection.
Creator
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Ingersoll, Robert Green [1833-1899]
Publisher
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Paine Press
Date
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1882
Identifier
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N336
Subject
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USA
Memorial Day
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<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (Col. Ingersoll's Decoration Day oration, June 1882), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
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application/pdf
Type
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Text
Language
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English
Memorial Addresses
NSS
United States-History