For one, acknowledging that soldiers’ reunions and the Grand Army organization do all this, and are all this, I make no apologies for them. On the contrary, I rejoice that the Grand Army is growing more popular with the men who wore the blue, and that soldiers’ reunions and camp-fires are held with more and more frequency. When the people cease to remember that there have been times when men cheerfully periled health and life for a good cause, they cease to believe in such a thing as patriotism. There is something in example, and these organizations of old soldiers, these reunions of old soldiers, reviving recollections of the old days, when nearly three million men stepped out of the monotony of commonplace lives, and glorified a glorious cause by patient endurance of hardships and privations, and the heroism of death—this example cannot be without its uses in teaching the younger generations of Americans, enjoying the birthright won at Yorktown and preserved at Appomattox, that love of country, courage, and devotion to duty should endure forever. And why should not the memories of the late war be kept alive? Was there ever, since the morning stars first sang together, a more patriotic, a holier, a greater war than that waged for the Union? We have been celebrating the Declaration of Independence, as I have said, for over a century. Yet the total free population of the American Colonies, at the outbreak of the Revolutionary war, was, in round numbers, 369,000 less than the number of Union soldiers mustered into service during the late civil war. The Continental army, during the Revolutionary war, never exceeded 76,000 men, present and absent; our army, during the war of 1812, aggregated only 38,186; and the total force of the United States during the war with Mexico was only 116,321. During the war of the Rebellion, 2,772,408 men enlisted in the Union army, and from January 1st, 1863, to May 1st, 1865, our army numbered, at all times, nearly 1,000,000 trained soldiers. Kansas alone furnished nearly half as many men for the Union army as were present for duty during any year of the Revolutionary struggle, under Washington. There were more Union soldiers killed in battle during the war of the Rebellion, and more died of wounds received in battle, than were present for duty during any previous war in which the United States has been engaged. In the National Cemeteries, 318,870 soldiers of the Union are buried—more than four times as many as were enlisted during the Revolutionary war. The latest and most accurate statements show that 44,238 Union soldiers were killed in battle; 49,205 died of wounds received in battle; 9,058 were drowned or accidentally killed; 184 were executed by the enemy; 224,899 died of disease, and 14,155 of causes not stated—making a total of 341,719.