The soldiers who served in its ranks have a just right to be proud of the record of their regiment, and to unite, on such an occasion as this, in reviving the incidents and events of their comradeship. Into no living man’s life, probably, will ever come such a lifting of noble emotion as that which swept over our land twenty years ago, and sent the flower of our youth and manhood hurrying off to the war. What eager, exciting, restless, passionate days those were! Probably not one of you had the faintest conception of the reality of war. Most of you thought it would be over in six months or a year. We all forgot that the men arrayed against us were Americans, and that the war was to be the old, old story of Greek meeting Greek. Most of you thought, no doubt, as nearly all volunteers did, that you might be cheated out of a chance to meet the “insolent foe,” by a sudden collapse of the Confederacy, and the hanging of a man named Davis on the sourest of sour-apple trees. Few imagined that the weary months would roll on, until the three years’ term of enlistment should expire, and still another year must elapse before Appomattox came. But you did your duty through it all, fulfilling every obligation you had made. And herein, I have always thought, the American volunteer exhibited the noblest qualities and the truest heroism. A battle is a terrible ordeal, but it never lasts long. It is the weary march, the silent vigils of the picket-line, the cheerless bivouac, the dull monotony of camp duties, the hard fare, the long procession of days dragging through spring, summer, autumn and winter—it is all of these, crowded full of discomfort, and fatigue, and hardship, and exposure, which wear upon the patience, endurance and courage of a soldier, and are the most severe tests of true soldierly qualities. There were many regiments in the volunteer army during the war that lost but few men in battle, but returned home with ranks as thin as if they had been decimated in many a fierce contest. “They need no praise whose deeds are eulogy,” and the men of the First Kansas—those gathered here to-day, and those sleeping in their lonely graves throughout the South—have a monument that will endure forever; the stately monument of a reunited, free, happy and prosperous country. This was the glad picture which was imprinted upon their hearts when they consecrated themselves to the cause of Union and Liberty; this is the reward they won for themselves and their posterity; this is the inspiration of the gathering here to-day; this will be the theme of historians and poets centuries hence; and this will be the pride and consolation of one and all when you hear the bugle sounding “lights out” for the last time on earth. THE WYANDOTTE CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION. Address, delivered at a reunion of the surviving officers and members of the Wyandotte Constitutional Convention, held at Wyandotte, Kas., July 29th, 1882.