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[An address delivered for Memorial Day, May
30, 1884, at Keene, NH, before John Sedgwick Post No. 4, Grand Army of the
Republic.]
Not long ago I heard a young man ask why people still kept
up Memorial Day, and it set me thinking of the answer. Not the answer that
you and I should give to each other-not the expression of those feelings
that, so long as you live, will make this day sacred to memories of love and
grief and heroic youth--but an answer which should command the assent of
those who do not share our memories, and in which we of the North and our
brethren of the South could join in perfect accord.
So far as this last is concerned, to be sure, there is no
trouble. The soldiers who were doing their best to kill one another felt
less of personal hostility, I am very certain, than some who were not
imperilled by their mutual endeavors. I have heard more than one of those
who had been gallant and distinguished officers on the Confederate side say
that they had had no such feeling. I know that I and those whom I knew best
had not. We believed that it was most desirable that the North should win;
we believed in the principle that the Union is indissoluable; we, or many of
us at least, also believed that the conflict was inevitable, and that
slavery had lasted long enough. But we equally believed that those who stood
against us held just as sacred conviction that were the opposite of ours,
and we respected them as every men with a heart must respect those who give
all for their belief. The experience of battle soon taught its lesson even
to those who came into the field more bitterly disposed. You could not stand
up day after day in those indecisive contests where overwhelming victory was
impossible because neither side would run as they ought when beaten, without
getting at least something of the same brotherhood for the enemy that the
north pole of a magnet has for the south--each working in an opposite sense
to the other, but each unable to get along without the other. As it was then
, it is now. The soldiers of the war need no explanations; they can join in
commemorating a soldier's death with feelings not different in kind, whether
he fell toward them or by their side.
But Memorial Day may and ought to have a meaning also for
those who do not share our memories. When men have instinctively agreed to
celebrate an anniversary, it will be found that there is some thought of
feeling behind it which is too large to be dependent upon associations
alone. The Fourth of July, for instance, has still its serious aspect,
although we no longer should think of rejoicing like children that we have
escaped from an outgrown control, although we have achieved not only our
national but our moral independence and know it far too profoundly to make a
talk about it, and although an Englishman can join in the celebration
without a scruple. For, stripped of the temporary associations which gives
rise to it, it is now the moment when by common consent we pause to become
conscious of our national life and to rejoice in it, to recall what our
country has done for each of us, and to ask ourselves what we can do for the
country in return.
So to the indifferent inquirer who asks why Memorial Day
is still kept up we may answer, it celebrates and solemnly reaffirms from
year to year a national act of enthusiasm and faith. It embodies in the most
impressive form our belief that to act with enthusiam and faith is the
condition of acting greatly. To fight out a war, you must believe something
and want something with all your might. So must you do to carry anything
else to an end worth reaching. More than that, you must be willing to commit
yourself to a course, perhpas a long and hard one, without being able to
foresee exactly where you will come out. All that is required of you is that
you should go somewhither as hard as ever you can. The rest belongs to fate.
One may fall-at the beginning of the charge or at the top of the earthworks;
but in no other way can he reach the rewards of victory.
When it was felt so deeply as it was on both sides that a
man ought to take part in the war unless some conscientious scruple or
strong practical reason made it impossible, was that feeling simply the
requirement of a local majority that their neighbors should agree with them?
I think not: I think the feeling was right-in the South as in the North. I
think that, as life is action and passion, it is required of a man that he
should share the passion and action of his time at peril of being judged not
to have lived.
If this be so, the use of this day is obvious. It is true
that I cannot argue a man into a desire. If he says to me, Why should I seek
to know the secrets of philosophy? Why seek to decipher the hidden laws of
creation that are graven upon the tablets of the rocks, or to unravel the
history of civilization that is woven in the tissue of our jurisprudence, or
to do any great work, either of speculation or of practical affairs? I
cannot answer him; or at least my answer is as little worth making for any
effect it will have upon his wishes if he asked why I should eat this, or
drink that. You must begin by wanting to. But although desire cannot be
imparted by argument, it can be by contagion. Feeling begets feeling, and
great feeling begets great feeling. We can hardly share the emotions that
make this day to us the most sacred day of the year, and embody them in
ceremonial pomp, without in some degree imparting them to those who come
after us. I believe from the bottom of my heart that our memorial halls and
statues and tablets, the tattered flags of our regiments gathered in the
Statehouses, are worth more to our young men by way of chastening and
inspiration than the monuments of another hundred years of peaceful life
could be.
But even if I am wrong, even if those who come after us
are to forget all that we hold dear, and the future is to teach and kindle
its children in ways as yet unrevealed, it is enough for us that this day is
dear and sacred.
Accidents may call up the events of the war. You see a
battery of guns go by at a trot, and for a moment you are back at White Oak
Swamp, or Antietam, or on the Jerusalem Road. You hear a few shots fired in
the distance, and for an instant your heart stops as you say to yourself,
The skirmishers are at it, and listen for the long roll of fire from the
main line. You meet an old comrade after many years of absence; he recalls
the moment that you were nearly surrounded by the enemy, and again there
comes up to you that swift and cunning thinking on which once hung life and
freedom--Shall I stand the best chance if I try the pistol or the sabre on
that man who means to stop me? Will he get his carbine free before I reach
him, or can I kill him first?These and the thousand other events we have
known are called up, I say, by accident, and, apart from accident, they lie
forgotten.
But as surely as this day comes round we are in the
presence of the dead. For one hour, twice a year at least--at the regimental
dinner, where the ghosts sit at table more numerous than the living, and on
this day when we decorate their graves--the dead come back and live with us.
I see them now, more than I can number, as once I saw them
on this earth. They are the same bright figures, or their counterparts, that
come also before your eyes; and when I speak of those who were my brothers,
the same words describe yours.
I see a fair-haired lad, a lieutenant, and a captain on
whom life had begun somewhat to tell, but still young, sitting by the long
mess-table in camp before the regiment left the State, and wondering how
many of those who gathered in our tent could hope to see the end of what was
then beginning. For neither of them was that destiny reserved. I remember,
as I awoke from my first long stupor in the hospital after the battle of
Ball's Bluff, I heard the doctor say, "He was a beautiful boy",
[Web note: Lt. William L. Putnam, 20th Mass.]
and I knew that one of those two speakers was no more.
The other, after passing through all the previous battles, went into
Fredericksburg with strange premonition of the end, and there met his fate.[Web
Note: Cpt. Charles F. Cabot, 20th Mass.]
I see another youthful lieutenant as I saw him in the
Seven Days, when I looked down the line at Glendale. The officers were at
the head of their companies. The advance was beginning. We caught each
other's eye and saluted. When next I looked, he was gone.
[Web note: Lt. James. J. Lowell, 20th Mass.]
I see the brother of the last-the flame of genius and
daring on his face--as he rode before us into the wood of Antietam, out of
which came only dead and deadly wounded men. So, a little later, he rode to
his death at the head of his cavalry in the Valley.
In the portraits of some of those who fell in the civil
wars of England, Vandyke has fixed on canvas the type who stand before my
memory. Young and gracious faces, somewhat remote and proud, but with a
melancholy and sweet kindness. There is upon their faces the shadow of
approaching fate, and the glory of generous acceptance of it. I may say of
them , as I once heard it said of two Frenchmen, relics of the ancien
regime, "They were very gentle. They cared nothing for their lives."
High breeding, romantic chivalry--we who have seen these men can never
believe that the power of money or the enervation of pleasure has put an end
to them. We know that life may still be lifted into poetry and lit with
spiritual charm.
But the men, not less, perhaps even more, characteristic
of New England, were the Puritans of our day. For the Puritan still lives in
New England, thank God! and will live there so long as New England lives and
keeps her old renown. New England is not dead yet. She still is mother of a
race of conquerors--stern men, little given to the expression of their
feelings, sometimes careless of their graces, but fertile, tenacious, and
knowing only duty. Each of you, as I do, thinks of a hundred such that he
has known.[Web note: Unfortunately for
New England, no such "conquerors" have played for the Red Sox since 1918].
I see one--grandson of a hard rider of the Revolution and bearer of his
historic name--who was with us at Fair Oaks, and afterwards for five days
and nights in front of the enemy the only sleep that he would take was what
he could snatch sitting erect in his uniform and resting his back against a
hut. He fell at Gettysburg. [Web note:
Col. Paul Revere, Jr.,
20th Mass.].
His brother , a surgeon,
[Web note: Edward H.R. Revere]
who rode, as our surgeons so often did, wherever the troops
would go, I saw kneeling in ministration to a wounded man just in rear of
our line at Antietam, his horse's bridle round his arm--the next moment his
ministrations were ended. His senior associate survived all the wounds and
perils of the war, but , not yet through with duty as he understood it, fell
in helping the helpless poor who were dying of cholera in a Western city.
I see another quiet figure, of virtuous life and quiet
ways, not much heard of until our left was turned at Petersburg. He was in
command of the regiment as he saw our comrades driven in. He threw back our
left wing, and the advancing tide of defeat was shattered against his iron
wall. He saved an army corps from disaster, and then a round shot ended all
for him. [Web note: Major Henry
Patten, 20th Mass.]
There is one who on this day is always present on my mind.
[Web note:
Henry Abbott, 20th Mass.]
He entered the army at nineteen, a second lieutenant. In the Wilderness,
already at the head of his regiment, he fell, using the moment that was left
him of life to give all of his little fortune to his soldiers.I saw him in
camp, on the march, in action. I crossed debatable land with him when we
were rejoining the Army together. I observed him in every kind of duty, and
never in all the time I knew him did I see him fail to choose that
alternative of conduct which was most disagreeable to himself. He was indeed
a Puritan in all his virtues, without the Puritan austerity; for, when duty
was at an end, he who had been the master and leader became the chosen
companion in every pleasure that a man might honestly enjoy. His few
surviving companions will never forget the awful spectacle of his advance
alone with his company in the streets of Fredericksburg.[Web
note: The legendary
suicidal charge of the 20th Mass. Regiment
occurred on Dec. 11, 1862.]
In less than sixty seconds he would become the focus
of a hidden and annihilating fire from a semicircle of houses. His first
platoon had vanished under it in an instant, ten men falling dead by his
side. He had quietly turned back to where the other half of his company was
waiting, had given the order, "Second Platoon, forward!" and was again
moving on, in obedience to superior command, to certain and useless death,
when the order he was obeying was countermanded. The end was distant only a
few seconds; but if you had seen him with his indifferent carriage, and
sword swinging from his finger like a cane, you would never have suspected
that he was doing more than conducting a company drill on the camp parade
ground. He was little more than a boy, but the grizzled corps commanders
knew and admired him; and for us, who not only admired, but loved, his death
seemed to end a portion of our life also.
There is one grave and commanding presence that you all
would recognize, for his life has become a part of our common history.
[Web note:
William Bartlett,
20th Mass.]. Who does not remember the leader of the
assault of the mine at Petersburg? The solitary horseman in front of Port
Hudson, whom a foeman worthy of him bade his soldiers spare, from love and
admiration of such gallant bearing? Who does not still hear the echo of
those eloquent lips after the war, teaching reconciliation and peace? I may
not do more than allude to his death, fit ending of his life. All that the
world has a right to know has been told by a beloved friend in a book
wherein friendship has found no need to exaggerate facts that speak for
themselves. I knew him ,and I may even say I knew him well; yet, until that
book appeared, I had not known the governing motive of his soul. I had
admired him as a hero. When I read, I learned to revere him as a saint. His
strength was not in honor alone, but in religion; and those who do not share
his creed must see that it was on the wings of religious faith that he
mounted above even valiant deeds into an empyrean of ideal life.
I have spoken of some of the men who were near to me among
others very near and dear, not because their lives have become historic, but
because their lives are the type of what every soldier has known and seen in
his own company. In the great democracy of self-devotion private and general
stand side by side. Unmarshalled save by their own deeds, the army of the
dead sweep before us, "wearing their wounds like stars." It is not because
the men I have mentioned were my friends that I have spoken of them, but, I
repeat, because they are types. I speak of those whom I have seen. But you
all have known such; you, too, remember!
It is not of the dead alone that we think on this day.
There are those still living whose sex forbade them to offer their lives,
but who gave instead their happiness. Which of us has not been lifted above
himself by the sight of one of those lovely, lonely women, around whom the
wand of sorrow has traced its excluding circle--set apart, even when
surrounded by loving friends who would fain bring back joy to their lives? I
think of one whom the poor of a great city know as their benefactress and
friend. I think of one who has lived not less greatly in the midst of her
children, to whom she has taught such lessons as may not be heard elsewhere
from mortal lips. The story of these and her sisters we must pass in
reverent silence. All that may be said has been said by one of their own
sex---
But when the days of golden
dreams had perished,
And even despair was powerless to destroy,
Then did I learn how existence could be cherished,
Strengthened, and fed without the aid of joy.
Then did I check the tears of useless passion,
weaned my young soul from yearning after thine
Sternly denied its burning wish to hasten
Down to that tomb already more than mine.
Comrades, some of the associations of this day are not only triumphant,
but joyful. Not all of those with whom we once stood shoulder to
shoulder--not all of those whom we once loved and revered--are gone. On this
day we still meet our companions in the freezing winter bivouacs and in
those dreadful summer marches where every faculty of the soul seemed to
depart one after another, leaving only a dumb animal power to set the teeth
and to persist-- a blind belief that somewhere and at last there was bread
and water. On this day, at least, we still meet and rejoice in the closest
tie which is possible between men-- a tie which suffering has made
indissoluble for better, for worse.
When we meet thus, when we do honor to the dead in terms
that must sometimes embrace the living, we do not deceive ourselves. We
attribute no special merit to a man for having served when all were serving.
We know that, if the armies of our war did anything worth remembering, the
credit belongs not mainly to the individuals who did it, but to average
human nature. We also know very well that we cannot live in associations
with the past alone, and we admit that, if we would be worthy of the past,
we must find new fields for action or thought, and make for ourselves new
careers.
But, nevertheless, the generation that carried on the war
has been set apart by its experience. Through our great good fortune, in our
youth our hearts were touched with fire. It was given to us to learn at the
outset that life is a profound and passionate thing. While we are permitted
to scorn nothing but indifference, and do not pretend to undervalue the
worldly rewards of ambition, we have seen with our own eyes, beyond and
above the gold fields, the snowy heights of honor, and it is for us to bear
the report to those who come after us. But, above all, we have learned that
whether a man accepts from Fortune her spade, and will look downward and
dig, or from Aspiration her axe and cord, and will scale the ice, the one
and only success which it is his to command is to bring to his work a mighty
heart.
Such hearts--ah me, how many!--were stilled twenty years
ago; and to us who remain behind is left this day of memories. Every
year--in the full tide of spring, at the height of the symphony of flowers
and love and life--there comes a pause, and through the silence we hear the
lonely pipe of death. Year after year lovers wandering under the apple trees
and through the clover and deep grass are surprised with sudden tears as
they see black veiled figures stealing through the morning to a soldier's
grave. Year after year the comrades of the dead follow, with public honor,
procession and commemorative flags and funeral march--honor and grief from
us who stand almost alone, and have seen the best and noblest of our
generation pass away.
But grief is not the end of all. I seem to hear the
funeral march become a paean. I see beyond the forest the moving banners of
a hidden column. Our dead brothers still live for us, and bid us think of
life, not death--of life to which in their youth they lent the passion and
joy of the spring. As I listen , the great chorus of life and joy begins
again, and amid the awful orchestra of seen and unseen powers and destinies
of good and evil our trumpets sound once more a note of daring, hope, and
will.
[Link here to
Holmes' other famous Memorial Day speech, in 1895: "The Soldier's Faith"]
Source: The Essential Holmes: Selections From the
Letters, Speeches, Judicial Opinions, and Other Writings of Oliver Wendell
Holmes, Jr., Edited and With an Introduction by Richard A Posner
(University of Chicago Press, 1992) pp. 80-87.
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