[Mr. Webster, on closing, was greeted with the most hearty, prolonged, and tumultuous applause.]

JOSEPH WHEELER

THE AMERICAN SOLDIER

[Speech of Joseph Wheeler prepared for the tenth annual banquet of the Confederate Veteran Camp of New York, New York City, January 19, 1898.  Edward Owen, Commander of the Camp, presided.  As General Wheeler was ill and unable to attend the banquet, his speech was read by J. E. Graybill.]

History has many heroes whose martial renown has fired the world, whose daring and wonderful exploits have altered the boundaries of nations and changed the very face of the earth.  To say nothing of the warriors of biblical history and Homeric verse, as the ages march along every great nation leaves us the glorious memory of some unique character, such as Alexander, Hannibal, Caesar.  Even the wild hordes of northern Europe and the barbaric nations of the East had their grand military leaders whose names will ever live on history’s pages, to be eclipsed only by that of Napoleon, the man of destiny, who, as a military genius, stands alone and unrivalled:  “Grand, gloomy, peculiar, he sat upon the throne, a sceptred hermit, wrapped in the solitude of his awful originality.”

The mediaeval ages gave us noble examples of devotedness and chivalry; but it belonged to the American Republic, founded and defended by Freedom’s sons, to give to the world the noblest type of warrior; men in whom martial renown went hand in hand with the noblest of virtues, men who united in their own characters the highest military genius with the loftiest patriotism, the most daring courage with the gentlest courtesy, the most obstinate endurance with the utmost self-sacrifice, the genius of a Caesar with the courage and purity of a Bayard.

Patriotism and love of liberty, the most ennobling motives that can fire the heart of man, expanding and thriving in the atmosphere of free America, added a refining touch to the martial enthusiasm of our forefathers and elevated the character of the American soldier to a standard never attained by fighting men of any other age or nation.

To recall their names and recount their deeds would lead me far beyond the time and space allotted.  Volumes would never do justice to the valorous achievements of George Washington and his compeers, the boys of ’76—­of the heroes of 1812 and of 1848; of the men in blue who fought under Grant, Sherman, Sheridan, Thomas, and Farragut; of the men in gray who followed the lead of Johnston, Jackson, and Lee from 1861 to 1865; of the intrepid band that sailed with Dewey into Manila Bay, or of the small but heroic army of 1898 that fought at Las Guasimas, El Caney, and San Juan, and left the Stars and Stripes floating in triumph over the last stronghold of Spain in the New World.

But above the grand heroic names immortalized by historian and poet shines with an undimmed lustre, all its own, the immortal name of Robert Edmund Lee.—­