mankind, if we and our children shall comprehend that they are the fundamental conditions of the life of the republic!

Then-long after-when, in a country whose vast population covering the continent with the glory of a civilization which the imagination cannot forecast, the completed century of the great battle shall be celebrated, the generation which shall gather here, in our places, will rise up and call us blessed!

Then, indeed, the fleeting angel of this hour will have yielded his most precious benediction; and in the field of Gettysburg as we now behold it, the blue and the gray blending in happy harmony, like the mingling hues of the summer landscape, we may see the radiant symbol of the triumphant America of our pride, our hope, and our joy!

GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS.

NO CONFLICT NOW.

(From Oration delivered at Charlestown, Massachusetts, June 17, 1875, at the Centennial Anniversary of the Battle of Bunker Hill, by General Devens, and edited by permission for the "Patriotic Reader.")

WELCOME to the citizens of every State, alike from those which represent the thirteen Colonies, and from the younger States of the Union! In the earnest hope that the liberty, guarded and sustained by the sanctions of law, which the valor of the fathers won for us, and which to-day we hold in solemn trust, may be transmitted to endless generations, we have gathered, in this countless throng, representing in its assemblage every portion of our common country. A welcome, cordial, generous, and heart-felt, to each and all!

Above all, let us strive to maintain and renew the fraternal feeling which should exist between all the States of the Union. The difficulty which the fathers could not eliminate from the problem before them, they dealt with, with all the wisdom and foresight they possessed. Two classes of States had their place, differing radically in this, that in the one, the system of slavery existed. Believing that the whole system would fade before the

noble influence of free government, they watched, that when that day came, the instrument they signed should bear no trace of its existence. It was not so to be; and the system has passed away in the tempest of battle and amid the clang of arms.

The conflict is over! No harsh punishments have sullied the conclusion! Day by day the material evidences of war fade from sight; the bastions sink to the level of the ground which surrounded them; scarp and counterscarp meet in the ditch which divided them. So let them pass away, forever!

To-day, it is the highest duty of all, no matter on what side they were, but, above all, of those who have struggled for the preservation of the Union, to strive that it become one of generous confidence, in which all the States shall, as of old, stand shoulder to shoulder, if need be, against the world in arms. Towards those with whom we were lately in conflict, and who recognize that the results are to be kept inviolate, there should be no feeling of resentment or bitterness. All true men are with the South, in demanding for her peace, order, honest and good government, and encouraging her in the work of rebuilding all that has been made desolate.

We need not doubt the issue. She will not stand as the "Niobe of nations," lamenting her sad fate; she will not look back to deplore a past which cannot, and should not, return; but, with the fire of her ancient courage, she will gird herself up to the emergencies of her new situation; she will unite her people by the bonds of that mutual confidence which their mutual interests demand, and renew her former prosperity, and her rightful influence in the Union.

Beside those of New England, we are gratified to-day by the presence of military organizations from New York and Pennsylvania, from Maryland, Virginia, and South Carolina, as well as by that of distinguished citizens from these and other States of the Union. Their fathers were ancient friends of Massachusetts; it was the inspiration they gave which strengthened the heart and nerved the arm of every man in New England. In every proper and larger sense, the soil upon which their sons stand, to-day, is theirs, as much as ours; and wherever there may have been estrangement, here, at least, we have met on common ground. They unite with us in recognition of the

great principles of civil and religious liberty, and in pious memory of those who vindicated them; they join with us in the wish to make of this regenerated Union a power grander and more august than its founders dared to hope.

Standing, always, in generous remembrance of every section of the Union, neither now nor hereafter will we distinguish between States, or sections, in our anxiety for the glory and happiness of all. To-day, upon the verge of the centuries, as together we look back upon that which is gone, in deep and heart-felt gratitude for the prosperity so largely enjoyed by us, so together will we look forward serenely and with confidence to that which is advancing. Together will we utter our solemn aspiration, in the spirit of the motto of the city which now encloses within its limits the battle-field and the town for which the battle was fought: "As God was to our fathers, so may He be to us."

CHARLES DEVENS.

THE NINETEENTH CENTURY ENDS SLAVERY.

(From Address of Justice Lamar, of the United States Supreme Court, at the unveiling of the statue of John Caldwell Calhoun, at Charleston, South Carolina, April 26, 1888.)

SLAVERY is dead,-buried in a grave that never gives up its dead. Let it rest! Yet, if I remain silent, it will be taken as an admission that there is one part of Mr. Calhoun's life of which it is prudent for his friends to say nothing to the present generation. No one would disapprove, and even disdain, such silence more than he. With reference to the constitutional status of slavery in the States, Mr. Calhoun never entertained or expressed a sentiment that was not entertained and expressed by Henry Clay, John Quincy Adams, Daniel Webster, and all the eminent statesmen of his time. The only difference between Mr. Calhoun, on the one hand, and Webster, Clay, and such statesmen, on the other, was, that the measures hostile to slavery which they sometimes countenanced, and at other times advocated, he saw and predicted, were in conflict with the guarantees of the Constitution, and that their direct tendency and

inevitable effect, and, in many cases, avowed motive, was the destruction of slavery in the States. And while Mr. Webster and Mr. Clay disclaimed any such motive, and denied any such probable effects, he declared to Mr. Webster, in debate, that the sentiment would grow and increase, until he, Mr. Webster, would himself be compelled to succumb, or be swept down beneath it. Vain the forms of law, vain the barriers of the Constitution, vain the considerations of State policy, vain the eloquence and the compromises of statesmen! His predictions were verified to the letter. They were all swept away before the irresistible force of the civilization of the nineteenth century, whose moral sentiment demanded the extinction of slavery.

Every benefit which slavery conferred upon those subject to it; all the ameliorating and humanizing tendencies it introduced into the life of the African; all the elevating agencies which lifted him higher in the scale of rational moral being, were the elements of the future and inevitable destruction of the system. The mistake that was made, by the Southern defenders of slavery, was in regarding it as a permanent form of society, instead of a process of emergence and transition from barbarism to freedom. If, at this very day, the North, or the American Union, were to propose to re-establish the institution, it would be impracticable. The South could not and would not accept it, as a boon. Slavery, as it existed then, could not exist under the present commercial systems of Europe and America. The existing industrial relations of capital and labor, had there been no secession, no war, would of themselves have brought about the death of slavery.

LUCIUS QUINTUS CINCINNATUS LAMAR.

AGAIN BRETHREN AND EQUALS.

(From Address delivered at Dedication of Soldiers' Monument, at Manchester, New Hampshire, by ex United States Senator Patterson, and edited by permission for the "Patriotic Reader.")

THE true grandeur of passing historic events is not seen till the noise and obstruction of the factitious and perishable are

forgotten. So the relative importance of our late war is not yet realized. Forts and trenches have been obliterated; harvests wave on its battle-fields, and the grass is green above the ashes of its victims. The prejudices and passions kindled by the strife have been laid, and we now contemplate, with serene and undistempered vision, the causes and nature of the sanguinary conflict. We do not forget its burdens; but we remember its compensations. The supremacy of the federal government, within the limitations of the fundamental law, is the only secure and stable foundation of the Union, and it must be maintained without compromise, in peace, as in war.

We respect the

The sons of the South are a noble stock. honesty of their convictions, and honor the virility with which they defended them. We would seek the cordial and conciliatory course of kindred, and would let the "dead past bury its dead." When the pride of exploded opinions, and the old warcries of party, shall have been silenced in the grave of antebellum politicians, the new generation will recognize and maintain that sovereignty of the Union which is essential to the development and defence of the highest welfare of all sections. The foreshadowed destiny of the Nation can only be imperilled by the loss of popular intelligence and morality. Common influences and interests will assimilate our whole population in habits and feeling, and they will come to cherish the same objects of pride and aspiration. This will be the future cement of the State, and the source of its united strength and glory. The day is not far distant when the South, equally with the North, will perceive that they builded better than they knew.

As an exhibition of physical prowess, the contention was magnificent! Both armies fought, for their convictions, with a relentlessness of valor, unsurpassed. The campaigns of the war, and the subsequent financial achievements, have revealed to the world a strength and integrity worthy of the ancient mould of men. The blood of the North and the South has mingled in a conflict of political principles. May it nourish no root of bitterness; but may there henceforth be a union of affections and labors to advance and perpetuate the dignity and grandeur of a common country. I protest, in the name of the dead and the peace of posterity, that the issues adjudicated in honorable war