_Soldiers of the Union!_ again I bid you welcome. I welcome you, as citizens of this great State, to its Capital. I welcome you as patriot heroes, who, during the darkest days the Republic has ever known, gladly and proudly periled health and life to save it from destruction. I welcome you as the men whose strong arms and brave hearts gave Freedom to the Slave, and made this land, in fact as well as in name, a land of Liberty. And with my whole heart I salute you in Fraternity, Charity, and Loyalty, and welcome you as comrades. THE KANSAS NATIONAL GUARD. Address of welcome, delivered to the Kansas National Guard, at Topeka, September 29, 1885. SOLDIERS OF THE KANSAS NATIONAL GUARD: In a recent story by a well-known American author, the characters engage in an after-dinner discussion concerning the war of the Rebellion, and one of them remarks that the astonishing fact connected with it was the superabundance of heroism it revealed. Then he asks his son: “How many young men do you know who would think it sweet to die for their country?” Very modestly the young man replies: “I can’t think of a great many at the moment, sir.” Whereupon, his uncle, a gallant soldier during the war, says: “Nor could I in 1861; nevertheless they were there.” The occasion is wanting now, but as “they were there” in 1861, so I have faith to believe that any great cause would find them now. I can remember hearing dolorous orators, in the years just preceding the outbreak of the Rebellion, bewailing the degeneracy of the times, and declaring that heroism and patriotism were things of the past. The flash of the gun at Sumter revealed not only the Nation’s peril, but its strength and glory. In a month, farms and workshops were deserted, and the peaceful North, transfigured by the splendor of its passion, became a Nation of warriors. In the story to which I have already referred, one of the characters, after quietly telling an incident of a desperate battle, in which his regiment sustained a severe loss, says, with intense feeling: “I don’t want to see any more men killed in my time.” This sentiment will, I feel confident, be approved by every soldier of the late war. Certainly, I hope that no occasion for calling the “Kansas National Guard” into active service may ever arise. But I am sure that if such an occasion did come, you would be equal to its duties and its responsibilities. Some of you know what war is. You learned it on fields where the earth trembled with the shock of contending hosts. Most, if not all of you, have in your veins the blood of men who were soldiers and heroes. And I am confident that, if you were called upon in any emergency demanding an illustration of true soldierly qualities, you would prove yourselves worthy successors of the men of 1861–5.