Show consummation of peace.
The day is not far distant when the statue of
Lee, the most beloved of all Southern men, who stands in history to-day abreast with the few great soldiers of the nineteenth century, will grace the streets of our national capital along with that of
Grant as a tribute of the nation to the greatness of American commanders, and I hope at an early day to see
Virginia and
Pennsylvania unite in placing on
Seminary Hill, at
Gettysburg, an equestrian statue of
Lee, with the right conceded to the
South to embellish that memorable field with statues of her heroic leaders.
A few years ago I made an earnest appeal to the
Pennsylvania Legislature to inaugurate such a movement, and it was delayed rather than refused for the reason, as then given, that
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it was not yet the time for so pronounced a declaration from our State that peace with sectional brotherhood had reached its consummation.
We are here to-day unveiling a monument to
Pennsylvania's fallen heroes on one of the great
Virginia battlefields, and there is welcome on every hand by the veterans who won the victory and the citizens who sympathized with the Gray, and I would give equal welcome to the statues of the
Confederate heroes on the
Gettysburg battlefield, and thus enable the visitor to that historic ground to read, by the statues and tablets on both sides, the complete history of the decisive conflict of the war.
