Address:
Albert B. Cummins, Governor
of Iowa
Mr. President and
Gentlemen of the Iowa Shiloh Commission, Mr. President and Gentlemen of the
National Shiloh Commission, Ladies and Gentlemen:
As I rise to perform my last official act upon this most
memorable journey, my mind and heart are swept with memories of Vicksburg, of
Andersonville, of Lookout Mountain, of Sherman Heights, of Rossville Gap; and
now, to this flood of recollections, patriotic, glorious, tender, sorrowful,
there is added the overwhelming current which always flows from this historic,
sacred fountain of the war. It seems to me, my friends from Iowa, that the week
we have devoted to the memory of our soldiers will be a week long remembered
among the grateful and patriotic children of our commonwealth. Standing here,
in the glory of this calm, beautiful, peaceful sunshine, it seems impossible to
believe that on such a day, forty years ago and more, these hills, valleys and
plains were crowded with eighty thousand men in mortal conflict. Can you
transfer yourself, in the exercise of your most vivid imagination, to that day,
when eighty thousand men strove here for the mastery? I have endeavored to call
to my vision that fateful struggle. We are now in the midst of a profound, and
as I hope, an enduring peace. We are now forty-one years from the day upon
which the light of peace dawned upon a distracted, disunited land, and yet we
are still too near the mighty conflict to see it in its true perspective. We
think of it still as involving only the shock of arms, the skill of commanders,
the endurance of mortal man, of suffering soldiers, of dying patriots; but the
future will look upon it from a higher, a holier and a truer standpoint.
As I look upon that dear old flag, it represents to me,
better than can any other symbol, the full meaning of the war of 1861, not to
the people of our own country alone, but to the people of the whole civilized
world. When these boys from Iowa, these boys from Tennessee, the boys from all
these states, were here, that old flag was drooping in dejection, in every part
of the civilized world, and there were few so poor as to do it reverence. Forty
years have gone by; forty years of peace, forty years of achievement, forty
years in which the genius of the American has worked upon the opulent resources
of nature, and now look at the old flag! It streams in triumph and beauty in
every part of the world, and my friends, it ought to make your hearts beat a
little faster, it ought to make the blood run a little more rapidly through
your veins, when you remember that at this moment there is not a ruler under
the sun so proud and so mighty but that he takes off his hat and bows his head
as Old Glory goes floating by. This is the real heritage of the war of 1861. I
remember, too, that when these boys were struggling for the possession of these
hills and valleys, Old Glory marked the sovereignty of the United States upon
the golden sands of the Pacific. But when peace came, the American began his
journey, his peaceful journey of triumph. Destiny took up the old flag and
carried it across the western sea, so that now, although I am speaking to you
in mid-afternoon, in the full tide of an autumn day, the morning's sun has not
yet gilded the beautiful colors of the stars and stripes as they proclaim the
sovereignty of the United States in the far away islands of the Philippines.
And so it seems to me that whatever may be the memories of
those who are about me, this mighty struggle, whether they fought over there
(pointing), under the stars and bars, or whether they fought here under the
stars and stripes, they are equally the heirs of a glory we never could have
enjoyed if, in the end, the Union had not been triumphantly maintained.
I have been impressed, as we have gone on from day to day,
by one phrase which we have constantly employed. We look at a monument and we
say, “the boys were worthy of this tribute.” Why do we call them boys? Why is that name so
dear to the hearts of the succeeding generation? We call them boys because they
were boys. Of the eighty thousand men the first day, and of the one hundred
thousand the next day, upon this field, I venture to say the average age was
under twenty-one; not more, at least, than twenty-one. Your boys, fighting for
the honor of your country’s flag and the permanence of your country’s
institutions. Ah, I do not wonder that we come here weeping. To their mothers,
to their wives, to their sisters, to the maids who loved them, these men, some
now gone beyond the river, some now sharing the gratitude of a succeeding
generation, will always be boys. And to us they shall always be boys. The
thought in my mind, however, is this, and it should fill us with transcendent
hope when we reflect upon it — that boys of eighteen, twenty and twenty-one
could, by the summons of war, change in the twinkling of an eye into the mature
heroes of conflict. The boys who climbed the banks of the Tennessee River, and
here offered themselves up that their country might live, became men — stern,
unyielding men — when the storm of shot and shell fell upon them. The days of
their boyhood were gone forever, and they stood, as stalwart giants, full of
the sense of responsibility, with minds attuned to the music of the Union, and
with arms strong to execute a high and sacred purpose.
It is not for me at this time to speak in detail of this,
the first great battle of the war in the west. Here, for the first time, the
flower of southern chivalry, led by that prince of men, Albert Sidney Johnston,
met the sturdy men from the west, commanded by that hero, that silent hero,
both of war and of peace — Ulysses S. Grant. And here, for the first time, I
believe, the great armies of the south and the north knew the full significance
of war. I see (pointing to the monument) Fame chiseling in the flinty granite
not only the names of these heroes, but I see her writing their great and noble
deeds, and as I have said more than once, upon an occasion like this, we cannot
honor them, for what they did is already carved imperishably upon the tablets
of time. It is for us to patriotically hearken to the echo of their deeds. It
is for us to so live, in these times of peace, that history, with her
inevitable verdict, history, with her unerring accuracy, shall, when we have
passed away, write of us, not the glory that she has written of them, but may
she say of us, “the world was better because they lived in it.”
And now, Mr. President, speaking in behalf of the
commonwealth of which we are both citizens, I accept the tribute which you have
presented, in gratitude and in honor of Iowa’s soldiers at the battle of
Shiloh. I need not say that the design you have chosen is a beautiful one. It
speaks for itself more eloquently than I possibly could. On behalf of all our
people, I thank you for the fidelity with which you have executed the
commission imposed upon you, and I say of you, as I have said of others, “Well
done, thou good and faithful servants.”
And now, for myself, I dedicate this shaft, as it rears
itself into the beautiful air of this sunshiny afternoon. I dedicate it to the
high and holy purpose for which it was established and erected. May it, so long
as time endures, stand there as the evidence of a courage and a patriotism
never exceeded in the history of mankind.
And Colonel Cadle, of the National Commission, representing
the United States government, it is with a pleasure unsurpassed in all this
journey that I now take what has been given to me by the Iowa Commission and
deliver it into your keeping. The pleasure is magnified a thousand-fold when I
remember that I am transferring these beautiful memorials of our Iowa boys to
one of Iowa's distinguished sons, a valorous, courageous soldier from our own
state. I doubt not that the government which you so ably represent will
surround these monuments with a loving care and a scrupulous attention, so that
succeeding generations may read and know the kind of men who fought for their
country and their flag in the days of 1861.
SOURCE: Alonzo
Abernathy, Editor, Dedication of
Monuments Erected By The State Of Iowa, p. 249-52
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