Thank God, I can now speak of our civil war with satisfaction and not with reluctance.  I allude to it with a satisfaction akin to that one feels in gazing upon a plain fertilized by an inundation.  Flowers spring up, birds sing, and golden grain nods in the sunlight.  But our civil war was more like an upheaval than like a deluge.  It shook every timber in the grand structure with which we had surprised the world.  Other governments have fallen of their own weight; our matchless edifice could not be shattered by an explosion.

Both contestants stood guard over the popular principle and would not let it be mined.  They were instructed in the same school and by the same teacher.  Local privilege was as strong with the one as with the other.  The dispute was whether the Union should endure the strain of the race and slavery issue.  The long and vexing argument was adjourned to the battlefield.  In no other respect was our system even threatened.  This close connection at the root made the angry divergence begin to assimilate at the very outset.

So kindred was it, that when Grant met his heroic opponent at Appomattox he says that he fell into such a reunion with him that he had twice to be reminded of the occasion that brought them together.  He then conformed to it, and treated those who surrendered not as conquered, but as reclaimed.  Lincoln went further.  He found a Confederate legislature ready-made to his hand, and promptly permitted it to repair the situation.  In thus mingling the gray with the blue he was neither color-blind nor purblind.  He knew what he was doing.  He desired to blend them, as emblematic of a more perfect Union.  Possibly the Confederate legislature suited his purpose best.

After this testimonial it looks to me something like treason to that great name to try to exclude Confederate worth from the annals of the strife or from the glory of its grand consummation.  Neither act nor actor can be profitably spared.

Mr. Speaker, the other day in this very Hall I laid a chaplet on the bier of a dead comrade.  To-day I am trying to commemorate the virtues of a Confederate colleague.  Both died while members of this House.  That both were my countrymen warms my heart.  As my countrymen I can make no invidious distinction.  If living neither would permit it, and he is more reckless than I who would profane the memory of either.

Mr. Speaker, I have said that I could speak of the civil war with satisfaction and not with reluctance.  The occasion prompted me to say so.  The occasion requires that, as a Union soldier, I should state my reasons.  We learn from experience, and war is the toughest kind of experience.  When it raised its horrid front and began its work of seeming devastation, we shrank back from its terrible promise.  The world looked to see us dismembered; but the great Republic, like a daring cruiser, emerged from the tempest sound from keel to truck.  Not a brace swung loose, not a plank was sprung, no spar was shivered.  Within there had to be readjustment.  Aloft the Stars and Stripes rose and fell in graceful recognition of the trial.  The thunder of her broadsides proclaimed the value of this object-lesson in nation-making.