Address to the 86th Illinois Regiment
Peoria, Illinois, 1866.

by Robert G. Ingersoll
(1866)

From The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll (Dresden Edition, 1900–1902), Volume 9.
Source: https://thegreatagnostic.com/works/address-to-the-86th-illinois-regiment/
Public domain. CC0 / Public Domain Mark 1.0.

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• This is only a fragment of a speech made by Col. Ingersoll
    at Peoria, 111., in 1866, to the 86th Illinois Regiment, at
    their anniversary meeting.

Peoria, Ills

1865.

THE history of the past four years seems to me like a terrible dream.
It seems almost impossible that the events that have now passed into
history ever happened. That hundreds of thousands of men, born and
reared under one flag, with the same history, the same future, and, in
truth, the same interests, should have met upon the terrible field of
death, and for four long years should have fought with a bitterness and
determination never excelled; that they should have filled our land with
orphans and widows, and made our country hollow with graves, is
indeed wonderful; but that the people of the South should have thus
fought—thus attempted to destroy and overthrow the Government founded
by the heroes of the Revolution—merely for the sake of perpetuating the
infamous institution of slavery, is wonderful almost beyond belief.

Strange that people should be found in this, the nineteenth century, to
fight against freedom and to die for slavery! It is most wonderful that
the terrible war ceased as suddenly as it did, and that the soldiers of
the Republic, the moment that the angel of peace spread her white wings
over our country, dropped from their hands the instruments of war
and eagerly went back to the plough, the shop and the office, and are
to-day, with the same determination that characterized them in battle,
engaged in effacing every vestige of the desolation and destruction of
war. But the progress we have made as a people is if possible still more
astonishing. We pretended to be the lovers of freedom, yet we defended
slavery. We quoted the Declaration of Independence and voted for the
compromise of 1850.

From servility and slavishness we have marched to heroism. We were
tyrants. We are liberators. We were slave-catchers. We are now the
chivalrous breakers of chains.

From slavery, over a bloody and terrible path, we have marched to
freedom. Hirelings of oppression, we have become the champions of
justice—the defenders of the right—the pillar upon which rests the
hope of the world. To whom are we indebted for this wonderful change?
Most of all to you, the soldiers of the great Republic. We thank you
that the hands of time were not turned back a thousand years—that the
Dark Ages did not again come upon the world—that Prometheus was
not again chained—that the river of progress was not stopped or
stayed—that the dear blood shed during all the past was not rendered
vain—that the sublime faith of all the grand and good did not become
a bitter dream, but a reality more glorious than ever entered into the
imagination of the rapt heroes of the past. Soldiers of the Eighty-sixth
Illinois, we thank you, and through you all the defenders of the
Republic, living and dead. We thank you that the deluge of blood has
subsided, that the ark of our national safety is at rest, that the dove
has returned with the olive branch of peace, and that the dark clouds of
war are in the far distance, covered with the beautiful bow.

In the name of humanity, in the name of progress, in the name of
freedom, in the name of America, in the name of the oppressed of the
whole world, we thank you again and again. We thank you, that in the
darkest hour you never despaired of the Republic, that you were not
dismayed, that through disaster and defeat, through cruelty and famine,
through the serried ranks of the enemy, in spite of false friends, you
marched resolutely, unflinchingly and bravely forward. Forward through
shot and shell! Forward through fire and sword! Forward past the corpses
of your brave comrades, buried in shallow graves by the hurried hands
of heroes! Forward past the scattered bones of starved captives! Forward
through the glittering bayonet lines, and past the brazen throats of the
guns! Forward through the din and roar and smoke and hell of war! Onward
through blood and fire to the shining, glittering mount of perfect and
complete victory, and from the top your august hands unfurled to the
winds the old banner of the stars, and it waves in triumph now, and
shall forever, from the St. Lawrence to the Rio Grande, and from the
Atlantic to the Pacific!

We thank you that our waving fields of golden wheat and rustling corn
are not trodden down beneath the bloody feet of invasion—that our homes
are not ashes—that our hearthstones are not desolate—that our towns
and cities still stand, that our temples and institutions of learning
are secure, that prosperity covers us as with a mantle, and, more than
all, we thank you that the Republic still lives; that law and order
reign supreme; that the Constitution is still sacred; that a republican
government has ceased to be only an experiment, and has become a
certainty for all time; that we have by your heroism established the
sublime and shining truth that a government by the people, for the
people, can and will stand until governments cease among men; that you
have given the lie to the impudent and infamous prophecy of tyranny, and
that you have firmly established the Republic upon the great ideas of
National Unity and Human Liberty.

We thank you for our commerce on the high seas, upon our lakes and
beautiful rivers, for the credit of our nation, for the value of our
money, and for the grand position that we now occupy among the nations
of the earth. We thank you for every State redeemed, for every star
brought back to glitter again upon the old flag, and we thank you
for the grand future that you have opened for us and for our children
through all the ages yet to come; and, not only for us and our children,
but for mankind.

Thanks to your efforts our country is still an asylum for the oppressed
of the Old World; the arms of our charity are still open, we still
beckon them across the sea, and they come in multitudes,'leaving home,
the graves of their sires, and the dear memories of the heart, and with
their wives and little ones come to this, the only free land upon which
the sun shines—and with their countless hands of labor add to the
wealth, the permanence and the glory of our country. And let them come
from the land of Luther, of Hampden and Emmett. Whoever is for freedom
and the sacred rights of man is a true American, and as such, we welcome
them all. We thank you to-day in the name of four millions of people,
whose shackles you have so nobly and generously broken, and who, from
the condition of beasts of burden, have by your efforts become men. We
thank you in the name of this poor and hitherto despised and insulted
race, and say that their emancipation was, and is, the crowning glory
of this most terrible war. Peace without liberty could have been only a
bloody delusion and a snare. Freedom is peace; Slavery is war.

We must act justly and honorably with these emancipated men, knowing
that the eyes of the civilized world are upon us. We must do what is
best for both races. We must not be controlled merely by party.

If the Government is founded upon principle, it will stand against the
shock of revolution and foreign war as long as liberty is sacred, the
rights of man respected, and honor dwells in the hearts of men.

We thank you for the lesson that has been taught the Old World by your
patriotism and valor; believing that when the people shall have learned
that sublime and divine lesson, thrones will become kingless, kings
crownless, royalty an epitaph, the purple of power the shroud of death,
the chains of tyranny will fall from the bodies of men, the shackles
of superstition from the souls of the people, the spirit of persecution
will fly from the earth, and the banner of Universal Freedom, with the
words "Civil and Religious Liberty for the World" written upon every
fold, blazing from every star, will float over every land and sea under
the whole heavens.

We thank you for the glorious past, for the still more glorious future,
and will continue to thank you while our hearts are warm with life. We
will gather around you in the hour of your death and soothe your last
moments with our gratitude. We will follow you tearfully to the narrow
house of the dead, and over your sacred remains erect the whitest and
purest marble. The hands of love will adorn your last abode, and the
chisel will record that beneath rests the sacred dust of the Heroic
Saviors of the Great Republic. Such ground will be holy, and future
generations will draw inspiration from your tombs, courage from your
heroic examples, patience and fortitude from your sufferings, and
strength eternal from your success.

I cannot stop without speaking of the heroic dead. It seems to me as
though their spirits ought to hover over you to-day—that they might
join with us in giving thanks for the great victory,—that their faces
might grow radiant to think that their blood was not shed in vain,—that
the living are worthy to reap the benefits of their sacrifices, their
sufferings and death, and it almost seems as if their sightless eyes are
suffused with tears. Then we think of the dear mothers waiting for their
sons, of the devoted wives waiting for their husbands, of the orphans
asking for fathers whose returning footsteps they can never hear; that
while they can say "my country," they cannot say "my son," "my husband,"
or "my father."

My heart goes out to all the slain, to those heroic corpses sleeping far
away from home and kindred in unknown and lonely graves, to those poor
pieces of dear, bleeding earth that won for me the blessings I enjoy
to-day.

Shall I recount their sufferings? They were starved day by day with
a systematic and calculating cruelty never equaled by the most savage
tribes. They were confined in dens as though they had been beasts, and
then they slowly faded and wasted from life. Some were released from
their sufferings by blessed insanity, until their parched and fevered
lips, their hollow and glittering eyes, were forever closed by the angel
of death. And thus they died, with the voices of loved ones in their
ears; the faces of the dear absent hovering over them; around them their
dying comrades, and the fiendish slaves of slavery.

And what shall I say more of the regiment before me? It is enough that
you were a part of the great army that accomplished so much for America
and mankind.

It is but just, however, to say that you were at the bloody field of
Perryville, that you stood with Thomas at Chickamauga and kept at bay
the rebel host, that you marched to the relief of Knoxville through
bitter cold, hunger and privations, and had the honor of relieving that
heroic garrison.

It is but just to say that you were with Sherman in his wonderful march
through the heart of the Confederacy; that you were in the terrible
charge at Kenesaw Mountain, and held your ground for days within a few
steps of the rebel fortifications; that you were at Atlanta and took
part in the terrible conflict before that city and marched victoriously
through her streets; that you were at Savannah; that you had the honor
of being present when Johnson surrendered, and his ragged rebel horde
laid down their arms; that from there you marched to Washington and
beneath the shadow of the glorious dome of our Capitol, that lifts from
the earth as though jealous of the stars, received the grandest national
ovation recorded in the annals of the world.
