Decoration Day Address
Metropolitan Opera House, New York.

by Robert G. Ingersoll
(1888)

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

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• Empty sleeves worn by veterans with scanty locks and
    grizzled mustaches graced the Metropolitan Opera House last
    night. On the breasts of their faded uniforms glittered the
    badges of the legions in which they had fought and suffered,
    and beside them sat the wives and daughters, whose hearts
    had ached at home while they served their country at the
    front.
    Every seat in the great Opera House was filled, and hundreds
    stood, glad to And any place where they could see and hear.
    And the gathering and the proceedings were worthy of the
    occasion.
    Mr. Depew upon taking the chair said that he had the chief
    treat of the evening to present to the audience, and that
    was Robert G. Ingersoll, the greatest living orator, and one
    of the great controversialists of the age.
    Then came the orator of the occasion Col. Ingersoll, whose
    speech is printed herewith.
    Enthusiastic cheers greeted all his points, and his audience
    simply went wild at the end. It was a grand oration, and it
    was listened to by enthusiastic and appreciative hearers,
    upon whom not a single word was lost, and in whose hearts
    every word awoke a responsive echo.
    Nor did the enthusiasm which Col. Ingersoll created end
    until the very last, when the whole assemblage arose and
    sang "America" in a way which will never be forgotten by any
    one present. It was a great ending of a great evening.—The
    New York Times, May 31st, 1888.

New York City.

1888.

THIS is a sacred day—a day for gratitude and love.

To-day we commemorate more than independence, more than the birth of
a nation, more than the fruits of the Revolution, more than physical
progress, more than the accumulation of wealth, more than national
prestige and power.

We commemorate the great and blessed victory over ourselves—the triumph
of civilization, the reformation of a people, the establishment of a
government consecrated to the preservation of liberty and the equal
rights of man.

Nations can win success, can be rich and powerful, can cover the earth
with their armies, the seas with their fleets, and yet be selfish, small
and mean. Physical progress means opportunity for doing good. It means
responsibility. Wealth is the end of the despicable, victory the purpose
of brutality.

But there is something nobler than all these—something that rises above
wealth and power—something above lands and palaces—something above
raiment and gold—it is the love of right, the cultivation of the moral
nature, the desire to do justice, the inextinguishable love of human
liberty.

Nothing can be nobler than a nation governed by conscience, nothing more
infamous than power without pity, wealth without honor and without the
sense of justice.

Only by the soldiers of the right can the laurel be won or worn.

On this day we honor the heroes who fought to make our Nation just and
free—who broke the shackles of the slave, who freed the masters of the
South and their allies of the North. We honor chivalric men who made
America the hope and beacon of the human race—the foremost Nation of
the world.

These heroes established the first republic, and demonstrated that
a government in which the legally expressed will of the people is
sovereign and supreme is the safest, strongest, securest, noblest and
the best.

They demonstrated the human right of the people, and of all the people,
to make and execute the laws—that authority does not come from the
clouds, or from ancestry, or from the crowned and titled, or from
constitutions and compacts, laws and customs—not from the admissions of
the great, or the concessions of the powerful and victorious—not from
graves, or consecrated dust—not from treaties made between successful
robbers—not from the decisions of corrupt and menial courts—not from
the dead, but from the living—not from the past but from the present,
from the people of to-day—from the brain, from the heart and from the
conscience of those who live and love and labor.

The history of this world for the most part is the history of conflict
and war, of invasion, of conquest, of victorious wrong, of the many
enslaved by the few.

Millions have fought for kings, for the destruction and enslavement of
their fellow-men. Millions have battled for empire, and great armies
have been inspired by the hope of pillage; but for the first time in the
history of this world millions of men battled for the right, fought to
free not themselves, but others, not for prejudice, but for principle,
not for conquest, but for conscience.

The men whom we honor were the liberators of a Nation, of a whole
country, North and South—of two races. They freed the body and the
brain, gave liberty to master and to slave. They opened all the highways
of thought, and gave to fifty millions of people the inestimable legacy
of free speech.

They established the free exchange of thought. They gave to the air a
flag without a stain, and they gave to their country a Constitution
that honest men can reverently obey. They destroyed the hateful, the
egotistic and provincial—they established a Nation, a national spirit,
a national pride and a patriotism as broad as the great Republic.

They did away with that ignorant and cruel prejudice that human rights
depend on race or color, and that the superior race has the right
to oppress the inferior. They established the sublime truth that the
superior are the just, the kind, the generous, and merciful—that the
really superior are the protectors, the defenders, and the saviors of
the oppressed, of the fallen, the unfortunate, the weak and helpless.
They established that greatest of all truths that nothing is nobler than
to labor and suffer for others.

If we wish to know the extent of our debt to these heroes, these
soldiers of the right, we must know what we were and what we are. A few
years ago we talked about liberty, about the freedom of the world, and
while so talking we enslaved our fellow-men. We were the stealers
of babes and the whippers of women. We were in partnership with
bloodhounds. We lived on unpaid labor. We held manhood in contempt.
Honest toil was disgraceful—sympathy was a crime—pity was
unconstitutional—humanity contrary to law, and charity was treason. Men
were imprisoned for pointing out in heaven's dome the Northern Star—for
giving food to the hungry, water to the parched lips of thirst, shelter
to the hunted, succor to the oppressed. In those days criminals and
courts, pirates and pulpits were in partnership—liberty was only a
word standing for the equal rights of robbers.

For many years we insisted that our fathers had founded a free
Government, that they were the lovers of liberty, believers in equal
rights. We were mistaken. The colonists did not believe in the freedom
of to-day. Their laws were filled with intolerance, with slavery and
the infamous spirit of caste. They persecuted and enslaved. Most of them
were narrow, ignorant and cruel. For the most part, their laws were more
brutal than those of the nations from which they came. They branded the
forehead of intelligence, bored with hot irons the tongue of truth. They
persecuted the good and enslaved the helpless. They were believers in
pillories and whipping-posts for honest, thoughtful men.

When their independence was secured they adopted a Constitution that
legalized slavery, and they passed laws making it the duty of free men
to prevent others from becoming free. They followed the example of kings
and nobles. They knew that monarchs had been interested in the slave
trade, and that the first English commander of a slave-ship divided his
profits with a queen.

They forgot all the splendid things they had said—the great principles
they had so proudly and eloquently announced. The sublime truths faded
from their hearts. The spirit of trade, the greed for office, took
possession of their souls. The lessons of history were forgotten. The
voices coming from all the wrecks of kingdoms, empires and republics on
the shores of the great river were unheeded and unheard.

If the foundation is not justice, the dome cannot be high enough, or
splendid enough, to save the temple.

But above everything in the minds of our fathers was the desire for
union—to create a Nation, to become a Power.

Our fathers compromised.

A compromise is a bargain in which each party defrauds the other, and
himself.

The compromise our fathers made was the coffin of honor and the cradle
of war.

A brazen falsehood and a timid truth are the parents of compromise.

But some—the greatest and the best—believed in liberty for all. They
repeated the splendid sayings of the Roman: "By the law of nature all
men are free;"—of the French King: "Men are born free and equal;"—of
the sublime Zeno: "All men are by nature equal, and virtue alone
establishes a difference between them."

In the year preceding the Declaration of Independence, a society for the
abolition of slavery was formed in Pennsylvania and its first President
was one of the wisest and greatest of men—Benjamin Franklin. A society
of the same character was established in New York in 1785; its first
President was John Jay—the second, Alexander Hamilton.

But in a few years these great men were forgotten. Parties rivaled each
other in the defence of wrong. Politicians cared only for place and
power. In the clamor of the heartless, the voice of the generous was
lost. Slavery became supreme. It dominated legislatures, courts and
parties; it rewarded the faithless and little; it degraded the honest
and great.

And yet, through all these hateful years, thousands and thousands of
noble men and women denounced the degradation and the crime. Most of
their names are unknown. They have given a glory to obscurity. They have
filled oblivion with honor.

In the presence of death it has been the custom to speak of the
worthlessness, and the vanity, of life. I prefer to speak of its value,
of its importance, of its nobility and glory.

Life is not merely a floating shadow, a momentary spark, a dream that
vanishes. Nothing can be grander than a life filled with great and noble
thoughts—with brave and honest deeds. Such a life sheds light, and the
seeds of truth sown by great and loyal men bear fruit through all the
years to be. To have lived and labored and died for the right—nothing
can be sublimer.

History is but the merest outline of the exceptional—of a few great
crimes, calamities, wars, mistakes and dramatic virtues. A few mountain
peaks are touched, while all the valleys of human life, where countless
victories are won, where labor wrought with love—are left in the
eternal shadow.

But these peaks are not the foundation of nations. The forgotten words,
the unrecorded deeds, the unknown sacrifices, the heroism, the industry,
the patience, the love and labor of the nameless good and great have for
the most part founded, guided and defended States. The world has
been civilized by the unregarded poor, by the untitled nobles, by the
uncrowned kings who sleep in unknown graves mingled with the common
dust.

They have thought and wrought, have borne the burdens of the world. The
pain and labor have been theirs—the glory has been given to the few.

The conflict came. The South unsheathed the sword. Then rose the
embattled North, and these men who sleep to-night beneath the flowers of
half the world, gave all for us.

They gave us a Nation—a republic without a slave—a republic that is
sovereign, and to whose will every citizen and every State must bow.
They gave us a Constitution for all—one that can be read without shame
and defended without dishonor. They freed the brain, the lips and hands
of men.

All that could be done by force was done. All that could be accomplished
by the adoption of constitutions was done. The rest is left to
education—the innumerable influences of civilization—to the
development of the intellect, to the cultivation of the heart and the
imagination.

The past is now a hideous dream.

The present is filled with pride, with gratitude, and hope.

Liberty is the condition of real progress. The free man works for wife
and child—the slave toils from fear. Liberty gives leisure and leisure
refines, beautifies and ennobles. Slavery gives idleness and idleness
degrades, deforms and brutalizes.

Liberty and slavery—the right and wrong—the joy and grief—the day and
night—the glory and the gloom of all the years.

Liberty is the word that all the good have spoken.

It is the hope of every loving heart—the spark and flame in every noble
breast—the gem in every splendid soul—the many-colored dream in every
honest brain.

This word has filled the dungeon with its holy light,—has put the halo
round the martyr's head,—has raised the convict far above the king,
and clad even the scaffold with a glory that dimmed and darkened every
throne.

To the wise man, to the wise nation, the mistakes of the past are the
torches of the present. The war is over. The institution that caused it
has perished. The prejudices that fanned the flames are only ashes now.
We are one people. We will stand or fall together. At last, with clear
eyes we see that the triumph of right was a triumph for all. Together we
reap the fruits of the great victory. We are all conquerors. Around the
graves of the heroes—North and South, white and colored—together
we stand and with uncovered heads reverently thank the saviors of our
native land.

We are now far enough away from the conflict—from its hatreds, its
passions, its follies and its glories, to fairly and philosophically
examine the causes and in some measure at least to appreciate the
results.

States and nations, like individuals, do as they must. Back of
revolution, of rebellion, of slavery and freedom, are the efficient
causes. Knowing this, we occupy that serene height from which it is
possible to calmly pronounce a judgment upon the past.

We know now that the seeds of our war were sown hundreds and thousands
of years ago—sown by the vicious and the just, by prince and peasant,
by king and slave, by all the virtues and by all the vices, by all the
victories and all the defeats, by all the labor and the love, the loss
and gain, by all the evil and the good, and by all the heroes of the
world.

Of the great conflict we remember only its glory and its lessons. We
remember only the heroes who made the Republic the first of nations, and
who laid the foundation for the freedom of mankind.

This will be known as the century of freedom. Slowly the hosts of
darkness have been driven back.

In 1808 England and the United States united for the suppression of the
slave-trade. The Netherlands joined in this holy work in 1818. France
lent her aid in 1819 and Spain in 1820. In the same year the United
States declared the traffic to be piracy, and in 1825 the same law was
enacted by Great Britain. In 1826 Brazil agreed to suppress the traffic
in human flesh. In 1833 England abolished slavery in the West Indies,
and in 1843 in her East Indian possessions, giving liberty to more than
twelve millions of slaves. In 1846 Sweden abolished slavery, and in
1848 it was abolished in the colonies of Denmark and France. In 1861
Alexander II., Czar of all the Russias, emancipated the serfs, and on
the first day of January, 1863, the shackles fell from millions of
the citizens of this Republic. This was accomplished by the heroes
we remember to-day—this, in accordance with the Proclamation of
Emancipation signed by Lincoln,—greatest of our mighty dead—Lincoln
the gentle and the just—and whose name will be known and honored to
"the last syllable of recorded time." And this year, 1888, has been made
blessed and memorable forever—in the vast empire of Brazil there stands
no slave.

Let us hope that when the next century looks from the sacred portals of
the East, its light will only fall upon the faces of the free.
  • By request, Col. Ingersoll closed this address with his
    "Vision of War,"  to which he added "A Vision of the
    Future." This accounts for its repetition in this volume.

The past rises before me like a dream. Again we are in the great
struggle for national life. We hear the sounds of preparation—the
music of boisterous drums—the silver voices of heroic bugles. We see
thousands of assemblages, and hear the appeals of orators. We see
the pale cheeks of women, and the flushed faces of men; and in those
assemblages we see all the dead whose dust we have covered with flowers.
We lose sight of them no more. We are with them when they enlist in the
great army of freedom. We see them part with those they love. Some are
walking for the last time in quiet, woody places, with the maidens they
adore. We hear the whisperings and the sweet vows of eternal love as
they lingeringly part forever. Others are bending over cradles, kissing
babes that are asleep. Some are receiving the blessings of old men. Some
are parting with mothers who hold them and press them to their
hearts again and again, and say nothing. Kisses and tears, tears and
kisses—divine mingling of agony and love! And some are talking with
wives, and endeavoring with brave words, spoken in the old tones, to
drive from their hearts the awful fear. We see them part. We see the
wife standing in the door with the babe in her arms—standing in the
sunlight sobbing. At the turn of the road a hand waves—she answers by
holding high in her loving arms the child. He is gone, and forever.

We see them all as they march proudly away under the flaunting flags,
keeping time to the grand, wild music of war—marching-down the streets
of the great cities—through the towns and across the prairies—down to
the fields of glory, to do and to die for the eternal right.

We go with them, one and all. We are by their side on all the gory
fields—in all the hospitals of pain—on all the weary marches. We stand
guard with them in the wild storm and under the quiet stars. We are with
them in ravines running with blood—in the furrows of old fields. We are
with them between contending hosts, unable to move, wild with thirst,
the life ebbing slowly away among the withered leaves. We see them
pierced by balls and torn with shells, in the trenches, by forts, and
in the whirlwind of the charge, where men become iron, with nerves of
steel.

We are with them in the prisons of hatred and famine; but human speech
can never tell what they endured.

We are at home when the news comes that they are dead. We see the maiden
in the shadow of her first sorrow. We see the silvered head of the old
man bowed with the last grief.

The past rises before us, and we see four millions of human beings
governed by the lash—we see them bound hand and foot—we hear the
strokes of cruel whips—we see the hounds tracking women through
tangled swamps. We see babes sold from the breasts of mothers. Cruelty
unspeakable! Outrage infinite!

Four million bodies in chains—four million souls in fetters. All the
sacred relations of wife, mother, father and child trampled beneath
the brutal feet of might. And all this was done under our own beautiful
banner of the free.

The past rises before us. We hear the roar and shriek of the bursting
shell. The broken fetters fall. These heroes died. We look. Instead of
slaves we see men and women and children. The wand of progress touches
the auction block, the slave pen, the whipping post, and we see homes
and firesides and school-houses and books, and where all was want and
crime and cruelty and fear, we see the faces of the free.

These heroes are dead. They died for liberty—they died for us. They
are at rest. They sleep in the land they made free, under the flag
they rendered stainless, under the solemn pines, the sad hemlocks, the
tearful willows, and the embracing vines.

They sleep beneath the shadows of the clouds, careless alike of sunshine
or of storm, each in the windowless Palace of Rest. Earth may run red
with other wars—they are at peace. In the midst of battle, in the roar
of conflict, they found the serenity of death. I have one sentiment for
soldiers living and dead: Cheers for the living; tears for the dead.

A vision of the future rises:

I see our country filled with happy homes, with firesides of
content,—the foremost land of all the earth.

I see a world where thrones have crumbled and where kings are dust. The
aristocracy of idleness has perished from the earth.

I see a world without a slave. Man at last is free. Nature's forces have
by Science been enslaved. Lightning and light, wind and wave, frost
and flame, and all the secret, subtle powers of earth and air are the
tireless toilers for the human race.

I see a world at peace, adorned with every form of art, with music's
myriad voices thrilled, while lips are rich with words of love and
truth; a world in which no exile sighs, no prisoner mourns; a world on
which the gibbet's shadow does not fall; a world where labor reaps its
full reward, where work and worth go hand in hand, where the poor girl
trying to win bread with the needle—the needle that has been called
"the asp for the breast of the poor,"—is not driven to the desperate
choice of crime or death, of suicide or shame.

I see a world without the beggar's outstretched palm, the miser's
heartless, stony stare, the piteous wail of want, the livid lips of
lies, the cruel eyes of scorn.

I see a race without disease of flesh or brain,—shapely and fair,—the
married harmony of form and function,—and, as I look, life lengthens,
joy deepens, love canopies the earth; and over all, in the great dome,
shines the eternal star of human hope.
