Beadle's Dime National Speaker, Embodying Gems of Oratory and Wit, Particularly Adapted to American Schools and Firesides

Why has this association of American women been formed? For the purpose of purchasing, preserving, reclaiming and protecting that spot we have just left, so sacred in our historic annals and in the nation's memory. It is because the man who lies there buried is not the mere hero of a novel – not the mere hero of to-day – not the mere soldier who achieved with his own sword his own fortune – not your Sultan Mohammed or Emperor Napoleon, who, with bloody ambition, created an empire on the Bosphorus or a dynasty on the Seine. The career of these heroes of the battle-field is as yonder blood-red moon, just risen above the Potomac, compared with the bright effulgence of the noonday sun, which shines with no borrowed light, as an auriole around the memory of George Washington. He can be addressed at this day, when he is so canonized in our hearts, only in the language of that poetry which has likened him to the brightest imagery which the material universe can furnish. He has been spoken of as the illustrious but lost Pleiad in our American constellation.

AMERICA vs. ENGLAND. – David Dudley Field

It has been said that if a new dictionary were now to be published in England, another definition of neutrality would have to be given. Certain it is that much of what has taken place on the other side of the ocean during this unhappy war comports little with our previous understanding of the duties of neutrals. And yet strict neutrality between belligerents is enjoined as much by philanthropy as by national honor; for while it protects national independence it restricts the limits of war. It is thus a rule alike of justice and of prudence. It springs from principles which lie at the foundation of international law; that is to say, the independence and the equality of nations. But there is another rule which springs from the same principles, and which is as old and as strong as that of neutrality, and is sometimes confounded with it – that is, the duty of every nation to abstain from any interference with the internal concerns of another. To be neutral between two belligerents is to help neither; to make, or help to make, two belligerents out of the same nation is to interfere in its internal relations. If it be said that this is but to recognize and declare a fact, I answer that the nation itself, as it is equal and independent, is the sole judge of the fact. The relation of the different parts with each other is a domestic concern. To assume to recognize and declare relations which it does not first recognize and declare, is, equally with the violation of neutrality, a departure from that courtesy and deference which are due from one nation to another. Both depend upon that public law of the world which is as old as governments and as eternal as equity. No nation is so ancient or mighty as to be above it; none so young or weak as to be below it. Each, as it takes its place in the family of nations, assumes it in all its plenitude. These rules the Government of this country has followed at all times and under all circumstances. Whatever may have been the sympathies of our people, whatever may have been the moral aspects of the foreign wars on which they have looked, and however much they have desired the success of one party over the other, they have inflexibly refused to throw their powers into the scale, or to allow any of their citizens to violate the neutrality which the Government enjoined. From the administration of Washington to the administration of Lincoln, through all the wars of the French Republic and the French empire, through the struggles of mastery in Eastern Europe, through the great civil wars in Poland, in Hungary and in India, we have steadily asserted the policy of non-interference, and maintained it in practice. And we have never resorted to the paltry evasion of doing secretly what we professed openly to avoid. What we said we meant, and what we meant we said. We have held the obligation to be paramount and universal. We complain of England and France, first for the proclamation or profession of neutrality, and then for the violation of the neutrality thus professed. This is not the place to enter upon the reasons which justify these complaints. The loyal people of this country have made up their opinions on both these subjects. They are convinced that England and France have wronged them in both respects, and are just as strongly convinced that Russia, whose naval officers are our guests to-night, has acted differently; has done us no injury; has conformed her conduct to the solemn injunctions of the law of nations, in accounting us competent to manage our own affairs; treating the established and recognized Government of the country as the only lawful belligerent, and holding no relations whatever with the rebels. It is impossible to mistake the settled convictions of the American people. They will never forget, through all the changes of future years, that in their mortal struggle the Czar has been true to them, and in the exercise of his great office has been inflexible in his adherence to the grand and salutary principles of public law. And they will just as surely never cease to believe that the Governments of England and France have desired the disruption of the republic, and have hastened unjustly to lift the rebels into the condition of legal belligerents; have offensively professed neutrality between the lawful and the rebel forces, and, after all, have evaded that professed neutrality by every species of indirect assistance which it was possible to give short of engaging in hostilities. These things will never be forgotten so long as Americans can read and remember. And, more than this, the men of this generation, who have smarted under these wrongs, will not rest until some of them are righted. We see the ground fresh with graves, half of which would never have been opened but for the countenance which England and France have given to the rebellion; and, whether it shall be procured from their apprehension of the consequences, or their sense of justice, reparation must be made, or the seed which has been sown in these three years will ripen into an iron harvest of future war, of which no man can foresee the end.

IF WE KNEW. – By Ruth Benton

If we knew the cares and crosses
Crowding round our neighbor's way,
If we knew the little losses,
Sorely grievous, day by day,
Would we then so often chide him
For his lack of thrift and gain —
Leaving on his heart a shadow,
Leaving on our life a stain?

If we knew the clouds above us,
Held by gentle blessings there,
Would we turn away all trembling,
In our blind and weak despair?
Would we shrink from little shadows,
Lying on the dewy grass,
While 'tis only birds of Eden,
Just in mercy flying past?

If we knew the silent story,
Quivering through the heart of pain,
Would our womanhood dare doom them
Back to haunts of guilt again?
Life hath many a tangled crossing;
Joy hath many a break of woe;
And the cheeks, tear-washed, are whitest;
This the blessed angels know.

Let us reach in our bosoms
For the key to other lives,
And with love toward erring nature,
Cherish good that still survives;
So that when our disrobed spirits
Soar to realms of light again,
We may say, "Dear Father, judge us
As we judged our fellow-men."