Autobiography of Charles Clinton Nourse: Prepared for use of Members of the FamilyNourse, Charles Clinton
History
Autobiography of Charles Clinton Nourse: Prepared for use of Members of the Family
Nourse, Charles Clinton
Iowa -- Politics and government; Lawyers -- Iowa -- Biography; Nourse, Charles Clinton, 1829-
They were with Lyon at Wilson's Creek, with Tuttle
at Donelson. They fought with Siegel and with Curtis at Pea Ridge;
with Crocker at Champion Hills; with Reid at Shiloh. They were with
Grant at the surrender of Vicksburg. They fought above the clouds
with Hooker at Lookout Mountain. They were with Sherman in his
march to the sea, and were ready for battle when Johnston
surrendered. They were with Sheridan in the Valley of the
Shenandoah, and were in the veteran ranks of the nation's
deliverers that stacked their arms in the national capital at the
close of the war.
The address concludes as follows:
Iowa hails with joy this centennial of our nation's birth. She
renews her vows of devotion to our common country, and looks with
hope to the future. The institution of slavery, that once rested as
a shadow upon the land, that was fast producing a diverse
civilization dangerous to our unity and nationality, has been
forever abolished.
This centennial exhibition of our national greatness and material
progress must re-awaken in the mind and heart of every American
emotions of profound love for his country, and of patriotic pride
in her success. Surely no American would consent that such a
civilization as is evidenced here should perish in the throes of
civil war. If there be anything in the history of Iowa and its
wonderful development to excite a just pride, the other, and
especially the older states of the Union may justly claim to share
in it. Such as we are, the emigration from the other states made
us. Our free soil, free labor, free schools, free speech, free
press, free worship, free men and free women, were their free gift
and contribution. Iowa is the thirty-year old child of the republic
that celebrates the first centennial of its birth. Our state is
simply the legitimate offspring of a civilization that has found
its highest expression in building up sovereign states. Iowa was
not a colony planted by the oppressions of the parent government,
and that threw off her allegiance as soon as she gained strength to
assert her independence; but she was the outgrowth of the natural
vitality and enterprise of the nation, begotten in obedience to the
divine command to multiply and replenish--born a sovereign by the
will and desire of the parent, and baptized at the font of liberty
as a voluntary consecration of her political life. Not a sovereign
in that absolute sense that would make the federal government an
impossibility, but sovereign within her sphere and over the objects
and purposes of her jurisdiction, with such further limitations
only upon her powers as render an abuse of them impossible, to the
end that the personal liberty and private rights of the citizen
should be more secure.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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