Into the hands of each Comrade was placed a printed copy of the following paper: "Parting as a Band of Brothers, let us cling to the memory of those tattered banners, under which we have fought together, and which, without dishonor, we have just now restored to the authorities who placed them in our hands. Till we grow gray-headed and pass away, let us sustain the reputation of this noble Regiment."Fortune threw together two organizations, the 84th and 57th, to make the present command. Both Regimentshave been in the service since the beginning of the strife, and the records of both will command respect in all coming time. Very many of those who were enrolled with us have fallen, and their graves are scattered here and there throughout the South. We shall not forget them, and the people of this Nation must and will honor their memory. Comrades, Farewell."Then with certificates of Honorable Muster-Out, all matters of detail faithfully completed, and the 8th day of July, 1865, at hand, the "Old Regimental Home" was gone, and forever.The War is over! But not so with its splendid achievements, its grand and far reaching results.Never was conflict waged to a better and surer end. Never a result attained bearing so completely upon true Governmental Economy.To the Revolution of '75 we are indebted for the rebellion of '61. The Revolution stands out the more grandly because of the resulting text—the rebellion. The rejection of the latter was the upholding of the principles of the former; posterity's emphatic endorsement of a valued ancestry.Victories may be great, but not always just. Conquerors have vanquished peoples and thereby encompassedcountries within their toils, and then regretted there was not more to do on the same line. But their doing was only the accomplishment of personal gain, the satisfaction of selfish purpose. With them war was a thing sought after, not a calamity to be avoided.Justice was not their polar star, nor did they seek the moral sphere as the place of their habitation. With them war was a vocation ordinary, and life and morals considerations secondary. Public standing and landed interests were made to depend upon military record. Conquered territory was divided as would be now the spoils of the theft, among the participators in the act and in proportion to the extent of the service done. What a mistake, how grievous a wrong, to review on the printed page the tenacity of an Alexander, or the vigor of a Napoleon, for the purpose of comparing the wars of their armies with the deeds of patriotism and of valor that moved the six fighting years of the Revolution, or the four years of the rebellion.No man this side the Atlantic forced the Revolution. It was the outcome of oppression that ill fitted a people who had crossed from the other shore, not to bear greater burden, but that they might be full free from the crush of wrong. In its beginning not aggressive, but defensive. A year passed by before it was determinedthat the yoke should be fully thrown off and absolute independence moved for.And so it was, when along in the after years came the overt acts of treason that were to force States into rebellion, against the will of their people, every effort, reasonable and unreasonable, was made to conciliate the men whose only desire was not Union, but disintegration. So far did some of the most prominently active, and, I may add, patriotic men of our Country, go in their determination to avoid a resort to arms, that the very amendment to the Constitution of these United States that forever forbids the institution of slavery, would have been, in number, the amendment that would have fastened slavery upon the Country forever, had it not been that just then treason grasped for too much and thereby lost all. Now, when all is safe, it moves us to a condition of agony to recall that in the Winter of '60 and '61, so weighty was the power of the then South, that among the men of our Country, those of best repute, were found so many, who, to avert war, were ready to surrender everything, save the theory of a Central Government for all the States, and the bare privilege tolookat the Old Flag.Our Country is great, our Government is powerful, but no thanks are owing to compromisers for the greatness of the one or the power of the other.Treason's eagerness for the capture ofallsaved one generation from the commission of a wrong that the good deeds of all the coming generations could not have atoned for.It is well to be on guard always.And what of the present?The once soldiers of the confederacy are entitled, as individuals, to every manly consideration at our hands; as individuals they are as we are, men walking the journey of life, reaching out to one common goal. But their organized bodies have no claim upon us for recognition. The Government should have taken the life from every "camp" at the birth, and its strong arm should have swept from its soil the first monument to rebellion, with the warning that the placing of the second would be known as treason.They have been asking that the War be forgotten, and yet they would keep us daily reminded by the flaunting of the confederate bars.No monument to treason should have been permitted a place on this or other Field, and being here should be returned to the donors, not to be erected elsewhere.No Government is strong enough to glorify treason against itself, nor to encourage it anywhere.The individual I would take most heartily by the hand, the organization I discard.There can be no true call for a union of the blue and the gray. Let all don the blue. In place of waiting for the chasm to be closed, flank it and locate upon our side. The chasm itself can do no harm. It will be a thing well to look upon at times, and take warning from as the divider of great depth and impassable width.As in Heaven, so in Earth, to dwell together as brothers, all must be of one mind, patriots upholding the one Flag, standing fast by the Red, White and Blue.When true history of our day comes to be written, all things will be made plain. With the faithful historian, it is not the question of the doing, but of the thing done. Just as when we look upon the completed work of the sculptor, or the finished touch of the painter, it is not of the marble, or the canvas and the material laid upon it that we think, but of the figure before us, as we note perfection in every line, and see life in the seeming light of the eye, and apparent movement of muscle.History gives little heed to men, save to designate the moral character of the age.And now, Comrades, for the part taken by the 84th Regiment Pennsylvania Veteran Volunteers in the setting of the page which will commemorate the workof our time, a grateful Commonwealth has placed upon this spot this weight of granite.To the living it is, and to the people yet to come it will be, the visible proof of the deeds of heroism which located a part of the life of the men who bore the names that make up the Roll of a Command, whose record among the Archives of the Nation is without the semblance of a blur or particle of a stain. Clear, positive, clean cut all the way through. Do we advancesentimentonly, when we say that such a body did not, could not have died in '65? Is there nothing of substance, nothing real, to come out of the thought, that as our Country lives, so we as a Regiment go on, living in the freedom of a land and the stability of a Government, neither of which would now be, without sentiment, the spring of human life?The Memorial which is here placed speaks from all along the line, from Bath to Appomattox.For the moment it moves aside, and where it was, and within the lengthening of its shadow, we see them all, and as we glance from right to left, from front to rear, one is taken from here, another from there, one by one, from the highest in rank to the lowest, from the oldest in years to the youngest, the man and the boy; first the 230 in the time of the War, then the many who have left us in the days that have intervened; andthen comes the Shaft into the space which was made for it. We look upon it now, and know that it stands forthem. The time is coming when it will stand forallwhose names made up a Regimental Roll.Then, and not till then, shall we know that our work here isfullydone.Two years ago, at the Reunion held at Huntingdon, a Committee was appointed to secure for our Regiment the benefit of the Act of Assembly appropriating money for the purchase of Monuments for Pennsylvania Commands and their erection on the Field of Gettysburg. I will not enter upon a recital of the details of that Committee's work, but simply report that it is completed.In so far as it may be the part of the Committee so to do, I now on its behalf turn over to you, Captain Johnson, as the Vice-President of the Regimental Association and its acting President, and as such the Representative of the Survivors of the 84th, this Memorial of its Service in the War of the Rebellion.TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES—Obvious print and punctuation errors fixed.—The transcriber of this project created the book cover image using the front cover of the original book. The image is placed in the public domain.
Into the hands of each Comrade was placed a printed copy of the following paper: "Parting as a Band of Brothers, let us cling to the memory of those tattered banners, under which we have fought together, and which, without dishonor, we have just now restored to the authorities who placed them in our hands. Till we grow gray-headed and pass away, let us sustain the reputation of this noble Regiment.
"Fortune threw together two organizations, the 84th and 57th, to make the present command. Both Regimentshave been in the service since the beginning of the strife, and the records of both will command respect in all coming time. Very many of those who were enrolled with us have fallen, and their graves are scattered here and there throughout the South. We shall not forget them, and the people of this Nation must and will honor their memory. Comrades, Farewell."
Then with certificates of Honorable Muster-Out, all matters of detail faithfully completed, and the 8th day of July, 1865, at hand, the "Old Regimental Home" was gone, and forever.
The War is over! But not so with its splendid achievements, its grand and far reaching results.
Never was conflict waged to a better and surer end. Never a result attained bearing so completely upon true Governmental Economy.
To the Revolution of '75 we are indebted for the rebellion of '61. The Revolution stands out the more grandly because of the resulting text—the rebellion. The rejection of the latter was the upholding of the principles of the former; posterity's emphatic endorsement of a valued ancestry.
Victories may be great, but not always just. Conquerors have vanquished peoples and thereby encompassedcountries within their toils, and then regretted there was not more to do on the same line. But their doing was only the accomplishment of personal gain, the satisfaction of selfish purpose. With them war was a thing sought after, not a calamity to be avoided.
Justice was not their polar star, nor did they seek the moral sphere as the place of their habitation. With them war was a vocation ordinary, and life and morals considerations secondary. Public standing and landed interests were made to depend upon military record. Conquered territory was divided as would be now the spoils of the theft, among the participators in the act and in proportion to the extent of the service done. What a mistake, how grievous a wrong, to review on the printed page the tenacity of an Alexander, or the vigor of a Napoleon, for the purpose of comparing the wars of their armies with the deeds of patriotism and of valor that moved the six fighting years of the Revolution, or the four years of the rebellion.
No man this side the Atlantic forced the Revolution. It was the outcome of oppression that ill fitted a people who had crossed from the other shore, not to bear greater burden, but that they might be full free from the crush of wrong. In its beginning not aggressive, but defensive. A year passed by before it was determinedthat the yoke should be fully thrown off and absolute independence moved for.
And so it was, when along in the after years came the overt acts of treason that were to force States into rebellion, against the will of their people, every effort, reasonable and unreasonable, was made to conciliate the men whose only desire was not Union, but disintegration. So far did some of the most prominently active, and, I may add, patriotic men of our Country, go in their determination to avoid a resort to arms, that the very amendment to the Constitution of these United States that forever forbids the institution of slavery, would have been, in number, the amendment that would have fastened slavery upon the Country forever, had it not been that just then treason grasped for too much and thereby lost all. Now, when all is safe, it moves us to a condition of agony to recall that in the Winter of '60 and '61, so weighty was the power of the then South, that among the men of our Country, those of best repute, were found so many, who, to avert war, were ready to surrender everything, save the theory of a Central Government for all the States, and the bare privilege tolookat the Old Flag.
Our Country is great, our Government is powerful, but no thanks are owing to compromisers for the greatness of the one or the power of the other.
Treason's eagerness for the capture ofallsaved one generation from the commission of a wrong that the good deeds of all the coming generations could not have atoned for.
It is well to be on guard always.
And what of the present?
The once soldiers of the confederacy are entitled, as individuals, to every manly consideration at our hands; as individuals they are as we are, men walking the journey of life, reaching out to one common goal. But their organized bodies have no claim upon us for recognition. The Government should have taken the life from every "camp" at the birth, and its strong arm should have swept from its soil the first monument to rebellion, with the warning that the placing of the second would be known as treason.
They have been asking that the War be forgotten, and yet they would keep us daily reminded by the flaunting of the confederate bars.
No monument to treason should have been permitted a place on this or other Field, and being here should be returned to the donors, not to be erected elsewhere.
No Government is strong enough to glorify treason against itself, nor to encourage it anywhere.
The individual I would take most heartily by the hand, the organization I discard.
There can be no true call for a union of the blue and the gray. Let all don the blue. In place of waiting for the chasm to be closed, flank it and locate upon our side. The chasm itself can do no harm. It will be a thing well to look upon at times, and take warning from as the divider of great depth and impassable width.
As in Heaven, so in Earth, to dwell together as brothers, all must be of one mind, patriots upholding the one Flag, standing fast by the Red, White and Blue.
When true history of our day comes to be written, all things will be made plain. With the faithful historian, it is not the question of the doing, but of the thing done. Just as when we look upon the completed work of the sculptor, or the finished touch of the painter, it is not of the marble, or the canvas and the material laid upon it that we think, but of the figure before us, as we note perfection in every line, and see life in the seeming light of the eye, and apparent movement of muscle.
History gives little heed to men, save to designate the moral character of the age.
And now, Comrades, for the part taken by the 84th Regiment Pennsylvania Veteran Volunteers in the setting of the page which will commemorate the workof our time, a grateful Commonwealth has placed upon this spot this weight of granite.
To the living it is, and to the people yet to come it will be, the visible proof of the deeds of heroism which located a part of the life of the men who bore the names that make up the Roll of a Command, whose record among the Archives of the Nation is without the semblance of a blur or particle of a stain. Clear, positive, clean cut all the way through. Do we advancesentimentonly, when we say that such a body did not, could not have died in '65? Is there nothing of substance, nothing real, to come out of the thought, that as our Country lives, so we as a Regiment go on, living in the freedom of a land and the stability of a Government, neither of which would now be, without sentiment, the spring of human life?
The Memorial which is here placed speaks from all along the line, from Bath to Appomattox.
For the moment it moves aside, and where it was, and within the lengthening of its shadow, we see them all, and as we glance from right to left, from front to rear, one is taken from here, another from there, one by one, from the highest in rank to the lowest, from the oldest in years to the youngest, the man and the boy; first the 230 in the time of the War, then the many who have left us in the days that have intervened; andthen comes the Shaft into the space which was made for it. We look upon it now, and know that it stands forthem. The time is coming when it will stand forallwhose names made up a Regimental Roll.
Then, and not till then, shall we know that our work here isfullydone.
Two years ago, at the Reunion held at Huntingdon, a Committee was appointed to secure for our Regiment the benefit of the Act of Assembly appropriating money for the purchase of Monuments for Pennsylvania Commands and their erection on the Field of Gettysburg. I will not enter upon a recital of the details of that Committee's work, but simply report that it is completed.
In so far as it may be the part of the Committee so to do, I now on its behalf turn over to you, Captain Johnson, as the Vice-President of the Regimental Association and its acting President, and as such the Representative of the Survivors of the 84th, this Memorial of its Service in the War of the Rebellion.
TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES—Obvious print and punctuation errors fixed.—The transcriber of this project created the book cover image using the front cover of the original book. The image is placed in the public domain.
TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES
—Obvious print and punctuation errors fixed.
—The transcriber of this project created the book cover image using the front cover of the original book. The image is placed in the public domain.