To-day his prophetic vision is fulfilled. The murmur of these hosts of
peace encamped upon this field of war, this universal voice of friendly
greeting and congratulation, these cheers of the gray echoing the cheers
of the blue, what are they but the answering music of those chords of
memory; the swelling chorus of the Union responding to the better
angels of our nature? If there be joy in Heaven this day, it is in the
heart of Abraham Lincoln as he looks down upon this field of Gettysburg.
But that the glory of this day, and of America, and of human nature, may
be full, it is the veterans and survivors of the armies whose tremendous
conflict interpreted the Constitution, who to-day, here upon the field
of battle and upon its twenty-fifth anniversary, clasp friendly hands of
sympathy to salute a common victory. This is a spectacle without
precedent in history. No field of the cloth of gold, or of the grounded
arms, no splendid scene of the royal adjustment of conquests, the
diplomatic settlement of treaties, or the papal incitement of crusades,
rivals in moral grandeur and significance this simple pageant.
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