Veterans! you are the remnant of many a well-fought field. You bring
with you marks of honor from Trenton and Monmouth, from Yorktown,
Camden, Bennington, and Saratoga. Veterans of half a century! when in
your youthful days you put everything at hazard in your country's cause,
good as that cause was, and sanguine as youth is, still your fondest
hopes did not stretch onward to an hour like this! At a period to which
you could not reasonably have expected to arrive, at a moment of
national prosperity such as you could never have foreseen, you are now
met here to enjoy the fellowship of old soldiers, and to receive the
overflowings of a universal gratitude.
But your agitated countenances and your heaving breasts inform me that
even this is not an unmixed joy. I perceive that a tumult of contending
feelings rushes upon you. The images of the dead, as well as the persons
of the living, present themselves before you. The scene overwhelms you,
and I turn from it. May the Father of all mercies smile upon your
declining years, and bless them! And when you shall here have exchanged
your embraces, when you shall once more have pressed the hands which
have been so often extended to give succor in adversity, or grasped in
the exultation of victory, then look abroad upon this lovely land which
your young valor defended, and mark the happiness with which it is
filled; yea, look abroad upon the whole earth, and see what a name you
have contributed to give your country, and what a praise you have added
to freedom, and then rejoice in the sympathy and gratitude which beam
upon your last days from the improved condition of mankind!
III.
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