Nor did the enthusiasm which Col. Ingersoll created end until the very last, when the whole assemblage arose and sang "America" in a way which will never be forgotten by any one present. It was a great ending of a great evening.--The New York Times, May 31st, 1888. New York City. 1888. THIS is a sacred day--a day for gratitude and love. To-day we commemorate more than independence, more than the birth of a nation, more than the fruits of the Revolution, more than physical progress, more than the accumulation of wealth, more than national prestige and power. We commemorate the great and blessed victory over ourselves--the triumph of civilization, the reformation of a people, the establishment of a government consecrated to the preservation of liberty and the equal rights of man. Nations can win success, can be rich and powerful, can cover the earth with their armies, the seas with their fleets, and yet be selfish, small and mean. Physical progress means opportunity for doing good. It means responsibility. Wealth is the end of the despicable, victory the purpose of brutality. But there is something nobler than all these--something that rises above wealth and power--something above lands and palaces--something above raiment and gold--it is the love of right, the cultivation of the moral nature, the desire to do justice, the inextinguishable love of human liberty. Nothing can be nobler than a nation governed by conscience, nothing more infamous than power without pity, wealth without honor and without the sense of justice. Only by the soldiers of the right can the laurel be won or worn. On this day we honor the heroes who fought to make our Nation just and free--who broke the shackles of the slave, who freed the masters of the South and their allies of the North. We honor chivalric men who made America the hope and beacon of the human race--the foremost Nation of the world. These heroes established the first republic, and demonstrated that a government in which the legally expressed will of the people is sovereign and supreme is the safest, strongest, securest, noblest and the best. They demonstrated the human right of the people, and of all the people, to make and execute the laws--that authority does not come from the clouds, or from ancestry, or from the crowned and titled, or from constitutions and compacts, laws and customs--not from the admissions of the great, or the concessions of the powerful and victorious--not from graves, or consecrated dust--not from treaties made between successful robbers--not from the decisions of corrupt and menial courts--not from the dead, but from the living--not from the past but from the present, from the people of to-day--from the brain, from the heart and from the conscience of those who live and love and labor.