se name will ever live in the history of the
nation. We shall have the great satisfaction of listening to
General Sherman."]

MR. PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN:--While in Washington I was
somewhat embarrassed by receiving invitations from two different New
England societies to dine with them on different days in commemoration
of the same event. I hoped, under cover of that mistake, to escape one
or the other, but I find that each claims its day to be the genuine
anniversary of the landing of their Fathers on Plymouth Rock. I must
leave some of you to settle this controversy, for I don't know whether
it was the 21st or 22d; you here in Brooklyn say the 21st; they in New
York say it was the 22d. Laboring under this serious doubt, when I came
on the stand and found my name enrolled among the orators and statesmen
present, and saw that I was booked to make a speech, I appealed to a
learned and most eloquent attorney to represent me on this occasion. I
even tried to bribe him with an office which I could not give; but he
said that he belonged to that army sometimes described as "invincible in
peace, invisible in war." [Laughter.] He would not respond for me.
Therefore I find myself upon the stand at this moment compelled to
respond, after wars have been abolished by the Honorable Secretary of
State, and men are said to have risen to that level where they are never
to do harm to each other again--with the millennium come, in fact, God
grant it may be so? [Applause.]

I doubt it. I heard Henry Clay announce the same doctrine long before
our Civil War. I heard also assertions of the same kind uttered on the
floor of our Senate by learned and good men twenty years ago when we
were on the very threshold of one of the most bloody wars which ever
devastated this or any other land. Therefore I have some doubt whether
mankind has attained that eminence where it can look backward upon wars
and rumors of war, and forward to a state of perpetual peace.

No, my friends, I think man remains the same to-day, as he was in the
beginning. He is not alone a being of reason; he has passions and
feelings which require sometimes to be curbed by force; and all prudent
people ought to be ready and willing to meet strife when it comes. To be
prepared is the best answer to that question. [Applause.]

Now my friends, the toast you have given me to-night to respond to is
somewhat obscure to me. We have heard to-night enumerated the principles