At the Palmer House, Chicago, Thursday, Nov. 18th, 1879.
Twelfth Toast:

The Volunteer Soldiers of the Union, whose valor and patriotism saved the world “a government of the people, by the people, and for the PEOPLE.”
Response by Robert G. Ingersoll.

WHEN the savagery of the lash, the barbarism of the chain, and the insanity of secession confronted the civilization of our century, the question “Will the great Republic defend itself?” trembled on the lips of every lover of mankind.

The North, filled with intelligence and wealth — children of liberty — marshaled her hosts and asked only for a leader. From civil life a man, silent, thoughtful, poised and calm, stepped forth, and with the lips of victory voiced the Nation’s first and last demand: “Unconditional and immediate surrender.” From that moment the end was known. That utterance was the first real declaration of real war, and, in accordance with the dramatic unities of mighty events, the great soldier who made it, received the final sword of the rebellion.

The soldiers of the Republic were not seekers after vulgar glory. They were not animated by the hope of plunder or the love of conquest. They fought to preserve the homestead of liberty and that their children might have peace. They were the defenders of humanity, the destroyers of prejudice, the breakers of chains, and in the name of the future they slew the monster of their time. They finished what the soldiers of the Revolution commenced. They re-lighted the torch that fell from their august hands and filled the world again with light. They blotted from the statute-books laws that had been passed by hypocrites at the instigation of robbers, and tore with indignant hands from the Constitution that infamous clause that made men the catchers of their fellow-men. They made it possible for judges to be just, for statesmen to be humane, and for politicians to be honest. They broke the shackles from the limbs of slaves, from the souls of masters, and from the Northern brain. They kept our country on the map of the world, and our flag in heaven. They rolled the stone from the sepulchre of progress, and found therein two angels clad in shining garments — Nationality and Liberty.

The soldiers were the saviors of the Nation; they were the liberators of men. In writing the Proclamation of Emancipation, Lincoln, greatest of our mighty dead, whose memory is as gentle as the summer air when reapers sing amid the gathered sheaves, copied with the pen what Grant and his brave comrades wrote with swords.

Grander than the Greek, nobler than the Roman, the soldiers of the Republic, with patriotism as shoreless as the............