While our only object, in the beginning of the Spanish-American war, was to teach the Spaniard the lesson he had so richly deserved to learn, at the same time, as the results of autocratic misrule were brought, more and more closely, under our direct observation, we took much honest pride in the reflection that we were not only resenting, as became free and enlightened men and women, an injury to our own well-beloved country, but that we were, at the same time, giving to a people, whose necks were raw and bleeding from the yoke of a tyrannical exercise of absolute power, an opportunity to throw off that yoke, and become, in due time, a self-governed and a self-respecting and an independent nation. Our short and fiery encounter with Spain demonstrated, as many years of unbroken peace and prosperity had not done and never could do, the invincibility of American arms, and the unexampled superiority of American daring, devotion, inventive genius and self-adjusting prowess; it was supposed that we had a very inadequate naval equipment, and that our standing army was very small, besides being poorly trained; in spite of this widely spread supposition, our troops won many brilliant victories upon the sea as well as on the land. The same spirit that saved the day for freedom and the right at Bunker Hill and Bennington animated the descendants of those gallant and intrepid warriors, who, soon after the heroic birth of our Republic, defended the cause they deemed to be a sacred one with all that they held dear, when they, too, went to meet the carefully trained and richly caparisoned phalanxes of those who bowed their heads and bent their suppliant knees unto an earthly king. An American volunteer is as nearly unconquerable as any merely human being can ever really be; his whole being is entirely devoted to the principle for the vindication of which he is about to enter into bodily combat; he is not hampered or bound down by anything that does not meet with the approval of his own conscience; physically, mentally, and morally, he is the equal of any enemy against whom he may be pitted; above him there floats a flag that has never been defeated, behind him are glorious deeds of valor that are well worthy of emulation, and before him are the hopes and aspirations of those who, with their feet firmly planted upon solid ground, practical, energetic and capable, yet, always, move among their fellows, seeing visions, dreaming dreams.