There were 49 engagements, large and small, during the eight years of the Revolution. There were 2,261 during the four years of the Rebellion. And in each of 149 of these the Union loss exceeded 500 men killed and wounded; in each of eighty-eight it was over 1,000; in fifty-two, over 2,000; in twenty-three, over 5,000; in fourteen, over 10,000; and in each of four, over 20,000. The engagements of the war of 1812 numbered only 89, and the casualties aggregated 1,877 killed, and 3,737 wounded—a total of 5,614. In the Mexican war there were only twenty-one engagements, in which the Americans lost 1,049 killed and 3,420 wounded—a total of 4,469. At the famous battle of Palo Alto, the American loss, in killed and wounded, aggregated only 174; at Monterey, 488; at Buena Vista, 723; at Cerro Gordo, 250; and at Molino del Rey, 787. The aggregate casualties of the American troops in all previous wars were less than those of the Union army at each of the great battles of Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, Chicamauga or Spottsylvania, and hardly reached one-half the casualties of Grant’s campaign through the Wilderness, or Sherman’s campaign against Atlanta. I am not citing these facts to depreciate the importance of previous wars, and certainly I would be the last person to depreciate the patriotism and valor of the soldiers who took part in them. I reverence the memory of the “embattled farmers” who, on the village green at Lexington, “fired the shot heard round the world;” I honor the soldiers who, from behind the cotton-bales at New Orleans, taught the trained soldiers of Great Britain a new lesson of war; and I glory in the fame which our little army won on the red fields of Mexico. But I want to make plain and clear the fact that the war for the Union was immeasurably greater than any struggle of modern times, not only in the vast armies it called into being, but in the heroism and patriotism it inspired, and the momentous results depending on its issue. Why, too, should not the sentiments and prejudices of the late civil war be perpetuated? The war saved the Union and emancipated a race. And in that single sentence what volumes of precious history, what glorious records of heroism, sacrifices and patriotism are condensed! What a noble lifting of all that is exalting in human nature, what a splendid record of patient devotion to duty, what self-forgetfulness and magnificent courage does it stand for! What centuries of human progress does it typify! It was a war for Freedom and National Unity. It was not waged for conquest, nor glory, nor ambition. It was a war to preserve, for all the generations of men, the priceless heritage of self-government. It was a war to vindicate the majesty of outraged law. It was a war to maintain this Republic as a beacon-light for all the world. It was a war, as the greatest of its martyrs said, waged “that a government of the people, by the people, for the people, should not perish from the earth.”