Their morning drum-beat belted the continent from the Atlantic to the Rocky mountains with one continuous strain of joyous reveille. Their evening dress parades were a spectacular divertisement, impressing on daily thronging thousands enlarged views of the power and dignity of invincible America. Their bugle calls ring through the air to-day awakening in our hearts echoes tuneful as the song of triumph on the lips of cherubim. They fought the aged, ancient mildews of a hideous past, and fused one whole new, glad, golden century of effort and aspiration into a short four years of matchless achievement. They fought against grievous error for the eternal truth, with a snow-bird-on-ice coolness, a Scotch-Irish firmness and the zeal of a cuckoo congressionalist. On land and sea they fought the battles of humanity and posterity and an immeasurable destiny. They fought giants who out-bunioned Bunyan, and antedated Dante--veritable giants of the pit, with thorny tongues and blazing eyes, welded Apollyon and megatherium. They fought against bayonets and bullets; against grape and shell; against howitzers and columbiads; against turrets and torpedoes; against sabres and carbines perversely aimed at their most vunerable points; against breast-works and rifle-pits bristling with sharpened steel. They fought across enfiladed valleys hissing with hot death-bolts and red with volcanic wrath; up rugged hillsides crested with flames of hell. They overcame armed rebellion and won a glorious peace. They conquered those who tore down the flag, and they lifted it to a peerless exaltation, where earth's admiring peoples may draw inspiration from its radiant splendor. They gained a victory so consummate, so complete, so irrevocable, so incontestable, that they condoned rebellion, and cordially welcomed back the culprits to a share in governing the nation they had fought to destroy. They conquered slavery with its multiples of horror. They conquered ignorance and hatred and oppression, and opened all the land to the sunbeams of modern enlightenment. They conquered navies and armies, generals and admirals, seaports and citadels and capitals, senates and cabinets and presidents. They conquered deathless fame for their grand pantheon of heroes, and garlands dewy with the freshness of a fadeless love for unnamed millions who wore the loyal blue. They conquered the hearts of generations yet to come, to whom their suffering and sacrifice have given the priceless heritage of noble deeds and an undivided country. They conquered states, and built around the regenerated nation a rampart of freedom, so high, so strong, so steadfast, that it may proudly bid defiance to a hostile world.