In the name of humanity, in the name of progress, in the name of freedom, in the name of America, in the name of the oppressed of the whole world, we thank you again and again. We thank you, that in the darkest hour you never despaired of the Republic, that you were not dismayed, that through disaster and defeat, through cruelty and famine, through the serried ranks of the enemy, in spite of false friends, you marched resolutely, unflinchingly and bravely forward. Forward through shot and shell! Forward through fire and sword! Forward past the corpses of your brave comrades, buried in shallow graves by the hurried hands of heroes! Forward past the scattered bones of starved captives! Forward through the glittering bayonet lines, and past the brazen throats of the guns! Forward through the din and roar and smoke and hell of war! Onward through blood and fire to the shining, glittering mount of perfect and complete victory, and from the top your august hands unfurled to the winds the old banner of the stars, and it waves in triumph now, and shall forever, from the St. Lawrence to the Rio Grande, and from the Atlantic to the Pacific! We thank you that our waving fields of golden wheat and rustling corn are not trodden down beneath the bloody feet of invasion--that our homes are not ashes--that our hearthstones are not desolate--that our towns and cities still stand, that our temples and institutions of learning are secure, that prosperity covers us as with a mantle, and, more than all, we thank you that the Republic still lives; that law and order reign supreme; that the Constitution is still sacred; that a republican government has ceased to be only an experiment, and has become a certainty for all time; that we have by your heroism established the sublime and shining truth that a government by the people, for the people, can and will stand until governments cease among men; that you have given the lie to the impudent and infamous prophecy of tyranny, and that you have firmly established the Republic upon the great ideas of National Unity and Human Liberty. We thank you for our commerce on the high seas, upon our lakes and beautiful rivers, for the credit of our nation, for the value of our money, and for the grand position that we now occupy among the nations of the earth. We thank you for every State redeemed, for every star brought back to glitter again upon the old flag, and we thank you for the grand future that you have opened for us and for our children through all the ages yet to come; and, not only for us and our children, but for mankind.