Mr. Chairman, standing here in Harvard College, the parent of all the colleges; in Massachusetts, the parent of all the North; when I consider her influence on the country as a principal planter of the Western States, and now, by her teachers, preachers, journalists and books, as well as by traffic and production, the diffuser of religious, literary and political opinion;—and when I see how irresistible the convictions of Massachusetts are in these swarming populations,—I think the little state bigger than I knew. When her blood is up, she has a fist big enough to knock down an empire. And her blood was roused. Scholars changed the black coat for the blue. A single company in the Forty-fourth Massachusetts Regiment contained thirty-five sons of Harvard. You all know as well as I the story of these dedicated men, who knew well on what duty they went,—whose fathers and mothers said of each slaughtered son, “We gave him up when he enlisted.” One mother said, when her son was offered the command of the first negro regiment, “If he accepts it, I shall be as proud as if I had heard that he was shot.”[179] These men, thus tender, thus high-bred, thus peaceable, were always in the front and always employed. They might say, with their forefathers the old Norse Vikings, “We sung the mass of lances from morning until evening.” And in how many cases it chanced, when the hero had fallen, they who came by night to his funeral, on the morrow returned to the war-path to show his slayers the way to death! Ah! young brothers, all honor and gratitude to you,—you, manly defenders, Liberty’s and Humanity’s bodyguard! We shall not again disparage America, now that we have seen what men it will bear. We see—we thank you for it—a new era, worth to mankind all the treasure and all the lives it has cost; yes, worth to the world the lives of all this generation of American men, if they had been demanded.[180] XVII ADDRESS AT THE DEDICATION OF THE SOLDIERS’ MONUMENT IN CONCORD, APRIL 19, 1867 “They have shown what men may do, They have proved how men may die,— Count, who can, the fields they have pressed, Each face to the solemn sky!” BROWNELL. * * * * *