It was no holiday war. It was replete with toilsome marches, with blistered and bleeding feet, through hot sands, under a tropical sun, and over jagged rocks, and snowy mountain ranges where horses and riders perished with cold. It abounded with nameless tragedies, both on bloody fields near many a battery’s smoking guns, and in the deep gloom of fever stricken hospitals. In that memorable war of two years, we fought seventy battles and engagements without the final loss of a single gun or American ensign. Engaged always against heavy odds, we bore the honor of our great republic triumphantly, on our ever advancing swords and bayonets. Blended with this patriotic reflection, we proudly recall the fact that we marched nearly three thousand miles through the country of an enemy, alien to us in race and language, and performed no act to wound the modesty of woman, or to sully the sanctity of her person. The flames of no defenceless homestead lighted up our line of march, and no matin hymn or vesper bell was silenced by our coming. We were always merciful in the hour of victory, and our army, while vindicating the prowess of our country, also illustrated its civilisation. What have been the material results of that victorious war? It acquired for us the vast territories of California, Nevada, Colorado, New Mexico, Idaho, Arizona, and Utah, thus adding one million square miles or 640,000,000 of acres to the United States, nearly doubling its area. According to authoritative statistics, there have been taken from the mines and rivers of the region thus acquired since 1848, gold and silver of the value of three thousand millions of dollars. Averaging the soldier at 140 pounds, this amount is sufficient to award to every soldier engaged in the battles of Mexico, were even all now living, his weight in pure gold. But the enterprising men, who developed that imperial domain that had so long lain stagnant under a semi-barbaric rule, were more than mere delvers in mines, and gold-washers in river-sands. They were the builders of empire, the raw material, the muscle and the mind of great civilised States, whose industrial products have even exceeded in value during the past thirty five years, all the precious metals that have been taken from their rocks and streams. Time, with its wide arch of forty years, has spanned many memorable events in our country, since we bore its flag in triumph over the smoking guns of hostile batteries on fields afar. Within thirteen years after we had entered victoriously the capital of Mexico, the capital of the United States was itself menaced by a hostile army. Through four years of internecine war the republic, founded by Washington, battled for its existence against armed legions that challenged its rightful supremacy within the State where Washington was born.