by batteries from Charleston city, and from every salient point in that harbor. Then, as with a mighty upheaval, burst forth that glorious spirit which had been repressed too long. The farmer left his plough in the furrow, the carpenter the nail half driven, the lawyer, the physician, the teacher, and the boys at school closed their books, all asking to be led against an enemy which, without cause or provocation, had dared to fire on our National flag. All party affiliations were wiped out as with a sponge, and the patriot masses demanded that the glorious Union of our fathers "must and shall be preserved," cost what it might.

Among this mighty host appeared young Ransom, in fresh manhood, fortunately better schooled than his fellows, and at once became a leader. I will not undertake to sketch his career during that eventful period; this has been done and well done by others. But he was ever among the foremost; wounded in Missouri, at Donelson, Shiloh, Vicksburg, and at Sabine Cross Roads, in Louisiana, with body torn and bleeding, his spirit could not be repressed, save by death or complete victory. He was not destined to see the end, but he knew that there could be but one result. Hardly recovered from his last wound in Louisiana, and filled with that dread poison which is distilled in the fatal swamps of the Lower Mississippi, he came to us at Atlanta just before Hood's movement to destroy our communications with Nashville, and was assigned to command one of the divisions of the Seventeenth Corps. General Blair, its chief, happening to go to St. Louis and Washington, Ransom succeeded to the command of that corps, and although unwell he commanded it in our rough and circuitous route to Gaylesville, Ala. There he became too ill to mount his horse. I saw him, and realized that his life was in great peril, and ordered him to be carried to Rome, Ga., twenty-six miles distant, the nearest point on a railroad. He was carried on a stretcher by some of his faithful escort, and it also so happened that in riding to Rome by that same road I saw and talked with him but a few hours before his death. Later in that same day,

October 29, 1864, his kind attendants, observing symptoms of approaching death, carried him into a house by the roadside and laid him on a bed. Realizing that his end was near, he said: "As a soldier I have tried to do my duty. I do not claim that all I have done was owing to patriotism alone, though I believe I have as much of that as most men. Patriotism and inclination have led the same way to do all in my power for my country."

Yes, Ransom, you did your duty as a soldier, as a man, and as a patriot. You gave your young life to your country with as pure a motive as ever actuated martyrs on earth, and if your spirit now hovers over this spot you will realize that your life was not sacrificed in vain.

The mystic chord of memory already stretches from your patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, and the better angels of our nature have long since touched that mystic chord and swelled the chorus of the Union till it is heard by eyery lover of freedom and justice all over this broad earth.

We, this day, your comrades, who knew you in life, have come from the four quarters to strew fresh flowers on your grave, believing that their sweet incense will rise to heaven as the best offering we can make to your brave soul and heroic spirit. A new generation has grown up since you laid down your precious life far away in Georgia, and these inspired by the teachings of their fathers and the gratitude they owe to our patriot dead, will assemble here, year by year, to perpetuate this beautiful ceremony which embellishes patriotism, and will stand an everlasting recognition of gratitude to that noble army of young men who in 1861 sprang to arms and rescued our country from the greatest danger which had ever assailed it.

Your name is enrolled high in the list of the heroes who, forgetful of self, sacrificed comfort, wealth, the care of family, and friends-yea, life itself—in order to perpetuate the blessings of free government to all posterity. You did not live to behold the glorious ending, but your tomb is now a sacred

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spot around which are gathered the few of your comrades who have been spared, and the thousands of young and beautiful who in the order of nature must succeed us, and your grave will for years continue to be a shrine for those who are grateful for the sacrifices you made that our country might fulfil its grand destiny among the nations of the earth. For a time, farewell!

THE FRUITION OF THE ORDINANCE

OF 1787.*

An Address delivered before the New York Commandery of the Military Order of the Loyal Legion, by General WAGER SWAYNE, October 5, 1887.

COMMANDER AND COMPANIONS:

I venture to ask your attention to what seems to me the direct and impressive connection between the most conspicuous result of that war which has associated us, and the less familiar history of a movement which was set on foot by another company of associates, of another American army, at the close of the Revolutionary War.

The fruits of our war are gathered and preserved, so far as its direct effect upon our own Government is concerned, in three short paragraphs which are amendatory of the Federal Constitution. They were adopted soon after the war, and with direct intention to make its results secure.

There have been fifteen amendments to that instrument since it was adopted on the first Wednesday in March, 1789. The first ten were adopted as one, immediately after the original instrument, and under circumstances which made them really part of the original transaction. Another followed within ten years, and the next one five years later. Then there were sixty years without a change.

The three amendments which followed the last war are therefore known as the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth. The first of them was adopted in 1865, the next in 1868, and the last in 1869.

The first of these amendments provides that, "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall

*The Editors regret that General Swayne's Address was received too late to appear in its proper chronological order.

exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction."

The second provides that, "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."

The third provides that, "The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude."

Each of them, in addition, provides that Congress, or "the Congress," as the Constitution designates it, our national legislature, may enforce its provisions "by appropriate legislation."

There are subsidiary sections of the fourteenth amendment, which regulate representation in Congress, prohibit men from holding office (until pardoned) who having, before the war, taken an oath of office to support the Constitution of the United States, were not deterred by that fact from attempting to overthrow that Constitution; prohibit questioning the validity of the public debt incurred in suppressing the Rebellion; and prohibit, also, the United States and every State from paying any debt incurred in aid of the Rebellion.

All these, however, are of incidental or of transient operation. The three clauses: inhibiting slavery; making all persons born or naturalized in the United States its citizens and citizens of their respective States; and then assuring to the citizen the full enjoyment of all his rights and privileges—these are the substance of these three amendments to the Federal Constitution, and these three, when grouped together, are perceived to be one. That one is but the ripened growth of the primary enactment, which is itself an adaptation of the