Southern Historical Society Papers, Volume 36.
Reverend J. William Jones, Ed.

[177] eloquently pleaded the cause of peace and fellowship, and among the first was the great war Governor of Pennsylvania. Reconstruction with its blotted record, long hindered the restoration of sympathetic relations between the North and South, and kept aflame what should have been the dying embers of sectional hate; but we are here to-day with a restored Union, not merely a union in form, but a Union of hearts, of sympathy and of patriotic fellowship, and the veterans of the Blue will to-day point will pride to the monuments erected to the heroes of the Gray who won the victory in this bloody struggle.

It was not the soldiers of either side on the front of the firing-line who hindered the restoration of our common brotherhood. Politicians played upon the prejudices and passions to serve political ends, but the veterans of both sides were the faithful advocates of generous and lasting peace. The veterans of the Gray will not shudder at the monument we are here to unveil. There are like monuments on every important battlefield of the Civil War, many erected to the heroic soldiers of Lee, and many erected to the heroic soldiers of Grant. They no longer stand as monuments for triumph for either the Blue or the Gray, but are accepted by every veteran of the North and South as monuments to the heroism of our American soldiery.