I was a second lieutenant in the Confederate service.  For a while.  This second cousin of mine, Colonel Watterson, the orator of this present occasion, was born and reared in a slave State, was a colonel in the Confederate service, and rendered me such assistance as he could in my self-appointed great task of annihilating the Federal armies and breaking up the Union.  I laid my plans with wisdom and foresight, and if Colonel Watterson had obeyed my orders I should have succeeded in my giant undertaking.  It was my intention to drive General Grant into the Pacific—­if I could get transportation—­and I told Colonel Watterson to surround the Eastern armies and wait till I came.  But he was insubordinate, and stood upon a punctilio of military etiquette; he refused to take orders from a second lieutenant—­and the Union was saved.  This is the first time that this secret has been revealed.  Until now no one outside the family has known the facts.  But there they stand:  Watterson saved the Union.  Yet to this day that man gets no pension.  Those were great days, splendid days.  What an uprising it was!  For the hearts of the whole nation, North and South, were in the war.  We of the South were not ashamed; for, like the men of the North, we were fighting for ’flags we loved; and when men fight for these things, and under these convictions, with nothing sordid to tarnish their cause, that cause is holy, the blood spilt for it is sacred, the life that is laid down for it is consecrated.  To-day we no longer regret the result, to-day we are glad it came out as it did, but we are not ashamed that we did our endeavor; we did our bravest best, against despairing odds, for the cause which was precious to us and which our consciences approved; and we are proud—­and you are proud—­the kindred blood in your veins answers when I say it—­you are proud of the record we made in those mighty collisions in the fields.

What an uprising it was!  We did not have to supplicate for soldiers on either side.  “We are coming, Father Abraham, three hundred thousand strong!” That was the music North and South.  The very choicest young blood and brawn and brain rose up from Maine to the Gulf and flocked to the standards—­just as men always do when in their eyes their cause is great and fine and their hearts are in it; just as men flocked to the Crusades, sacrificing all they possessed to the cause, and entering cheerfully upon hardships which we cannot even imagine in this age, and upon toilsome and wasting journeys which in our time would be the equivalent of circumnavigating the globe five times over.

North and South we put our hearts into that colossal struggle, and out of it came the blessed fulfilment of the prophecy of the immortal Gettysburg speech which said:  “We here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom; and that a government of the