Other feelings have, in the
progress of time, altered much, but amid many changes that simple belief
of boyhood has never altered.
And you, brave men who wore the gray, would be the first to hold me or
any other son of the North in just contempt if I should say that now it
was all over I thought the North was wrong and the result of the war a
mistake. To the men who fought the battles of the Confederacy we hold
out our hands freely, frankly and gladly. We have no bitter memories to
revive, no reproaches to utter. Differ in politics and in a thousand
other ways we must and shall in all good nature, but never let us differ
with each other on sectional or state lines, by race or creed.
We welcome you, soldiers of Virginia, as others more eloquent than I
have said, to New England. We welcome you to old Massachusetts. We
welcome you to Boston and to Faneuil Hall. In your presence here, and at
the sound of your voices beneath this historic roof, the years roll
back, and we see the figure and hear again the ringing tones of your
great orator, Patrick Henry, declaring to the first Continental
Congress, "The distinctions between Virginians, Pennsylvanians, New
Yorkers, and New Englanders are no more.
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