My mission being now accomplished, having shed tears in the first church of the Puritans, when the heartfelt benediction was pronounced over my unworthy head by that venerable pastor, I have only to ask that I be dismissed from further service with your kind wishes.  I will hold the occasion ever dear to my remembrance, for it is here I have found the solution of the great political problem.  Like Archimedes, I have found the fulcrum by whose aid I may move the world—­the moral world—­and that fulcrum is Plymouth Rock.

WILLIAM TECUMSEH SHERMAN

THE ARMY AND NAVY

[Speech of General William T. Sherman at the first annual dinner of the New England Society in the City of Brooklyn, December 21, 1880.  The President, Benjamin D. Silliman, on announcing the toast, “The Army and Navy—­Great and imperishable names and deeds have illustrated their history,” said:  “In response to this toast, I have the privilege of calling on the great Captain who commands the armies of the Republic; of whom it has been said, that he combines the skill and valor of the soldier, with the wisdom of the statesman, and whose name will ever live in the history of the nation.  We shall have the great satisfaction of listening to General Sherman.”]

MR. PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN:—­While in Washington I was somewhat embarrassed by receiving invitations from two different New England societies to dine with them on different days in commemoration of the same event.  I hoped, under cover of that mistake, to escape one or the other, but I find that each claims its day to be the genuine anniversary of the landing of their Fathers on Plymouth Rock.  I must leave some of you to settle this controversy, for I don’t know whether it was the 21st or 22d; you here in Brooklyn say the 21st; they in New York say it was the 22d.  Laboring under this serious doubt, when I came on the stand and found my name enrolled among the orators and statesmen present, and saw that I was booked to make a speech, I appealed to a learned and most eloquent attorney to represent me on this occasion.  I even tried to bribe him with an office which I could not give; but he said that he belonged to that army sometimes described as “invincible in peace, invisible in war.” [Laughter.] He would not respond for me.  Therefore I find myself upon the stand at this moment compelled to respond, after wars have been abolished by the Honorable Secretary of State, and men are said to have risen to that level where they are never to do harm to each other again—­with the millennium come, in fact, God grant it may be so? [Applause.]

I doubt it.  I heard Henry Clay announce the same doctrine long before our Civil War.  I heard also assertions of the same kind uttered on the floor of our Senate by learned and good men twenty years ago when we were on the very threshold of one of the most bloody wars which ever devastated this or any other land.  Therefore I have some doubt whether mankind has attained that eminence where it can look backward upon wars and rumors of war, and forward to a state of perpetual peace.