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After Corinth, your steamers at Yazoo Pass fairly walked the woods like things of life. Then came more boats and your voyage down the Mississippi, where was tested the immortality of our Western river men in passing those multiplied rebel batteries at Vicksburg. But this obstruction to Western commerce was at last dug out and blown out for all time, and until the Fourth of July shall be no more. Your success, with the aid of the Mississippi squadron, came just in time to vie with that of your Eastern friends at Gettysburg. The glory of that day East and West has passed into history, and future ages will read with unceasing interest the achievements by flood and field of our soldiers and sailors. Happy are we to-night, boys, to greet at once and altogether our glorious Union in Meade, Porter and Sherman. Your right being thus planted with effect you put in your left at Chattanooga, and severely beating Johnston's and Hood's armies, you walked home by way of Savannah for exercise. Yet not all this without an episode or two, for an infallible Western army had, under an appropriate leader, taken Island No. 10, and at Memphis the Admiralty jurisdiction was by force of arms shown, as since by decree of law it has been established to extend over fresh as well as salt water.

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Who that takes the map showing the marches of the military forces comprising your army for the years 1862-3-4 and 5, and notes your progress then, but that must feel that its sons were worthy of their forefathers, and of the land which the Great Giver of good gifts had given them. Broad as their home is, the spirit of its people in peace, in war, in peace again, has ever been equal to it. It has no mountain beyond their enterprise, no stream more irresistible than their courage; the rush and devastation of the Western hurricane symbolizes their wrath, and the golden smile of the harvests of many States reflects their beneficence.

To embrace the general plan of operations over such a wide and varied theater required, in military affairs, the same scope of thought and depth of forecast as distinguishes, in civil affairs, the true statesman. There might be repetition of means, but no failure or retrograde. Unlike fields in other lands this was too broad to be traveled over often. A few days marches there brought opposing armies in direct and extended conflict, and in cases of reverses, the task, though fearful severe, could be repeated.

Generals could be changed and armies frequently regathered for projection over the same routes and upon a single point. Not so here. Once initiated in a general advance upon the South, whether against Corinth, Vicksburg, Chattanooga or Atlanta, the plan had to be accomplished. How often, think you, might your army have retreated in defeat up the Mississippi to Cairo, and yet returned to Vicksburg? How often relanded and refought the battle of Shiloh? How often retaken Lookout Mountain, or reassailed Alatoona, Kenesaw, and reinvested Atlanta, after retreats to Chattanooga? How many times undertaken at new march through Georgia, if once driven back? Even now, when these things are but speculations, the heart sinks at the thought, and the vastness of these enterprises are magnified by the very necessity of complete success or our overthrow. That they were successful, proves the conclusion that there were in the councils of our leaders the comprehension of greatness, and the foresight of genius. There was one who was present in all your operations, and in some led you alone. Sherman, in the Atlanta campaign and the subsequent march to the sea, displayed a generalship that not only defeated but disgraced a formidable opponent. Your commander then seemed to enjoy an intellectual eminence that made the plans of other men like a map beneath him, and a mental vision that pierced the future as the eagle's eye does the misty horizon, and with these exalted qualities he combined a rapidity of execution that startled your foes with its dreadful sweep and certainty.

"Next to the sun in 'Southern' lands,
Ringed by the azure world he stands,
He watches from his mountain walls,
The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls,
Then, like a thunderbolt he falls!"

But your first great commander, possessing not inferior compre hension, brought from his Western life no less valuable qualities than those of the expeditious Sherman. The Army of the Tennessee, as many another army of the Union, had need of tenacity of purpose under many a trying ordeal. Who in this assembly, can this day forget the battle of Shiloh or Pittsburg Landing and the firmness and endurance of Grant. The first day's fight had been against us. Prentiss, after a manly, heroic resistance had been captured. Hurlbut had borne the heat of the battle until its too fierce fires had driven him near to the impassable river.

Wallace had fallen, and Sherman was resisting with such oft repeated assaults from every vantage ground upon the too venturesome foe as gave them earnest of his future dealings with them; the massed Confederates, elated by an apparent success, were charging with yells of terrible triumph; the camps were in their hands, and nearly half our artillery was gone; "the whole army was crowded into the region of Wallace's camp, and to a crescent of from one-half to two-thirds of a mile around the landing, the next repulse would put us into the river, and there were not transports enough to cross a single division." But who thought of surrender? Who even in that early battle had not already learned that the fight had to be fought out on that small landing, if needs be. To be calm and imperturable amid such a scene, to take advantage of the first lull of the pelting of that pitiless storm, and have Colonel Webster fling into sudden and almost unassailable semi-circle the remaining artillery, and man it on the instant by whatever means; to summon the "Tyler,” and the “Lexington,” to repeat the lessons of Fort Henry and Fort Donelson to their rebellious and inapt scholars, and thus in sullen resistance to await the hastening division of the army of the Ohio, and then to abide in all confidence to-morrow's victory, and with the morrow's morn to take the initiative and aggressive movement, and win the day, were acts that proved the man as the world has since known him, a man of measureless persistence, as silent and resisting as nature, and with a mental endurance that out-lasts all opposition, and seems to rob defeat of its legitimate results, and expects ultimate victory as the proper compensation for early disaster.

"Proof to the tempest shock,
Moored in the rifted rock,
The deeper he roots him, the
Harder it blows."

And in all of these vast and successful efforts you had the advantage of a corps of staff officers, in the Quarter-Master, Commissary and Ordinance Departments, which exhibited a capacity equal to your severe demands and measured your necessities so fully, and met them so promptly, as entitle its officers to our warmest praise and lasting remembrance. The impromptu navies of the West, the clothing and equipment of hundreds and thousands of men, the mounting of cavalry and batteries, and the supply of rations and ammunition, and above all the transportation

of all these to the front, and points of need, over hundreds and thousands of miles were the results of an energy of character and grasp of thought remarkable as any exhibitions of the war. Besides the chiefs of these bureaus, at Washington, who had the whole country to attend to, there were Allen, Myers and Parsons, Haines and Callender, and under them hundreds of others performing their silent but efficient services, as the heart sends its life and vigor to the very extremities of the human frame. Xerxes bridged the Hellespont with boats, but executed the engineers who could not maintain the work. Your staff officers fairly bridged the great western rivers lengthwise and kept your supplies moving to the front, so as to rejoice in their achievements and your applause to this hour.

Yet they in turn must recognize that they dealt in all their arduous undertakings with a people on these rivers, and in the States that border them, who gave such a hearty and prompt. co-operation as rendered their task not only cheerful, but possible.

If we can thus admire the breadth, depth and irresistible powers of these men, we yet note with enthusiasm another's characteristics even more peculiarly Western, and which gave rise among you of the impetuous cavalryman. You scarcely had time to mark him with a star before he sped from you for other fields, but at home or abroad, the Army of the Tennessee has claimed and felt proud of the record of Sheridan. His popularity is not more owing to the successes he has attained than the dashing manner in which he has secured them. The Western purpose of "going for" the enemy was embodied in him. He went for General Chalmers at Booneville, when a Colonel, and in command of only the 2nd Michigan and 2nd Iowa Cavalry, very much as he went for General Jubal Early down the resounding banks of the old Shenandoah, and then between were Perryville, Murfreesboro, Stone River and Chickamauga, and after that the barn door movement on the rear of Petersburg and Richmond, that fairly "corralled" the enemy. He might well compliment Count Bismark at Sedan, by comparing the surrender of Napoleon to that of General Lee at Appomatox Court-house. It is great praise to be praised by the great ("Laudari a viro laudato,") Sheridan illustrated what the future, I believe, will place beyond all contradiction, that great and invaluable as have been and must forever continue to be the services of the other arms of the volunteers,

their cavalry, in proper hands, may be as efficient for the purposes of aggressive and successful war as the infantry. The last war continued long enough as it was to raise high in public estimation this particular arm, and there should be no difference in efficiency between soldiers of a common origin because some are afoot and others on horseback.

The same qualities must necessarily lead to the same results, when properly controlled and directed. Sheridan, Hatch, Kilpatrick. Grierson, Wilson, Upton and the many others of cavalry fame, who secured the esteem and won the admiration of the armies with which they were associated, have forever rendered it necessary that volunteer cavalry shall be efficient and triumphant. The American horse has been vindicated, and "woe to the rider who tramples him down." If Western clan can scale the mountain, it can also scour the plain, and the plume of military honor shall float at the beginning of the next war, as it did at the close of the last, with as gallant a bearing, and free from stain, amid the cavalry squadrons, as along the battalions of the infantry, or amid the batteries of red artillery.

To be impetuous and thus upon the sabre's point to catch the wreath of glory in full career, marks one. But there is also the soldier of another caste, patient, unflinching either in the field, where he dares the murderous missiles of the open foe, or in the duties of civil life, when he dared the hate and slander of secret enemies. The character of a true soldier, with the heart of a true philanthropist was united in Howard. It was the earliest effort of our fathers to erect next after their homes, the school-house and the church. Their true representatives have since the war carried the lessons learned from your and their sacrifices, to the walks of civil life, and dared to meet any responsibility the reputation of your country for humanity and justice may have required.

And from their characters the mind turns easily and fondly to that of those silent and unobtrusive heroines whose gentle yet selfsacrificing deeds in the war were born of the wealth of courage, faith, hope and charity, which has forever abounded in the breast of our American women. The theme is too exalted for compliment and their unobtrusive and silent mercies, silence fulsome laudation. It is a thought worthy of frequent repetition, that while you were away and in action, for every one of you a score of

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