nished. You were not fossilized in 1865. The war was not a nurse,
nor was it a very thorough schoolmaster. It did serve, however, to
show to friends and country what kind of men America contained. Not I
nor you perhaps can take this pleasing interpretation to ourselves,
but looking at the five hundred thousand men who outlived the war, we
see that they were the same men before the war and have remained
the same since the war. Their ability, friendship, patriotism, and
religion were better known after they had shown their faith by deeds,
but their identity and character were in great measure the same.

"Many of our Presidents have been taken from the ranks of the army.
But it would be a mockery of political wisdom to declare that a free,
intelligent people elect a chief executive simply to reward him for
having been in the war of 1861. Captain Garfield, Lieutenant Hayes,
Major McKinley, and General Grant were not put at the head of the
nation as one would vote a pension. They were elected because the
people believed them to be the very best statesmen they could select
for the office. For a time every foreign consul except four was a
soldier. Two-thirds of Congress had been in the army. Twenty-nine
governors in the same year had been in military service. Nine
presidents of universities had been volunteers in 1863. Three thousand
postmasters appointed in one year were from the army. Cabinet
officers, custom-house officers, judges, district attorneys, and
clerks in public offices were almost exclusively selected from army
men. Could you look in the face of the nations and declare that with
all our enterprise, learning, progress, and common sense, we had such
an inadequate idea of the responsibilities of government that we
elected men to office who were incapable, simply because they had
carried a gun or tripped over a sword! No, no. The shrewd Yankee and
the calculating Hoosier are not caught with such chaff. They selected
these officers as servants of the nation because the war had served to
show what sort of men they were.

"In short, they appointed them to high positions because they were
true men. They are just as true men now. They are as patriotic, as
industrious, as unselfish, as brave to-day as they were in the dark
days of the rebellion. Their efforts are as honest now as they were
then, to perpetuate free institutions and maintain the honor of the
flag.

"They have endowed colleges, built cathedrals, opened the