ternational arbitration. So you will see the importance of possessing an effective army. Most of you gentlemen learned your military experience from the practice of war. You were soldiers of a glorious kind, but you are about the last of your kind, for it would be impossible to again raise such an army as you belonged to.'

Other speakers were G. A. R. Department Commander Branch, Col. Childs of St. Albans and Judge W. G. Veazey. A message of respect was ordered to be sent in the name of the society to Gen. Stephen Thomas, and the meeting adjourned in the small hours of the morning.

THIRTY-SECOND REUNION.

RUTLAND, OCTOBER 29, 1895.

The 32nd reunion was held at Rutland on the 29th of October, 1895. The business meeting was held at the Bardwell House at 3 o'clock p. m. It was called to order by President E. M. Haynes. The Nominating Committee, consisting of Captain E. J. Ormsbee, Dr. J. D. Hanrahan, Capt. J. E. Eldredge, Lieut. J. B. Needham, Capt. S. E. Burnham, Lieut.Col. W. J. Sperry, Capt. R. B. Stearns, Major J. L. Barstow, Capt. J. C. Baker, Major A. B. Valentine, Major L. K. Kingsley, Sergeant J. B. Scully, Col. W. W. Grout, Lieut. Hugh Henry, Major Josiah Grout, Gen. W. Y. W. Ripley and Major C. H. Forbes, reported the following list of officers for the year ensuing and they were elected:

OFFICERS FOR 1895-6.

President, Lieut. Henry A. Fletcher of Cavendish. Vice-Presidents, Lieut.-Col. F. G. Butterfield of Derby Line, Capt. R. B. Stearns of Burlington.

pelier.

Secretary and Treasurer, Lieut. Fred E. Smith of Mont

Executive Committee, F. E. Smith, J. H. Lucia and L. W. Shedd of Montpelier.

After considerable discussion Montpelier was selected as the place for the next reunion. Complimentary telegrams were sent to Col. Wheelock G. Veazey and Gen. Stephen Thomas.

The evening exercises were held in the Opera House, which was filled with an appreciative audience. The Rutland City band furnished excellent music for the occasion. The orator of the evening was Congressman and Ex-Judge of the Supreme Court of Vermont, H. Henry Powers, who discussed the question: Was the War for the Union right or wrong?

HON. H. H. POWERS'S ADDRESS.

What shall our children be taught? At a recent gathering of many thousands of veterans who wore the blue and the gray in the late war, and in the presence of many distinguished men from civil life from civil life the governors of two sovereign states advanced two diametrically opposite views touching the education that should be given to the children of the nation respecting the history of the struggle in which the members of this reunion society took part.

This incident is my excuse for departing somewhat from the trend of thought usually allowed by our annual gatherings; for it seems to me that nothing more concerns our future as a nation than that the rising and future generations should be taught the true inwardness of that great struggle. What was the true casus belli?

The question at issue was not, as is sometimes thoughtlessly said, an effort on the part of the general government to overthrow slavery in the Southern States. Mr. Lincoln in his first inaugural message expressly avowed as much. Congress at its first session after the outbreak of hostilities emphatically reiterated President Lincoln's declaration. The press and the loyal people of the North, in every way and by all manner of protestation, declared that the war was waged to preserve the constitution and maintain the Union as it then was, without in any way questioning, much less meddling with, the domestic institutions of the Southern States.

Thus the question at issue, as announced by the general government and sanctioned by the loyal North, was this:

Has this nation the power of self-preservation? In other words, Have the people of the individual States the right un

der the constitution to disregard their allegiance to the federal head, nullifying its decrees and severing their relations therewith? Moreover, in the Southern states the issue was made on the same identical lines. All their leading men justified the revolt on the ground that our government was a mere confederation of states, united for some limited purposes of common concern, but reserving to themselves the right to judge of the propriety of federal action and the further right to end the confederation whenever they severally judged it best to do so. In other words, the South maintained the doctrine popularly known as "State rights"; that the individual State had supreme, sovereign power, and the general government held only a limited and subordinate power over the citizens of the individual states.

If this claim of the South was sound the services of the Union soldier cannot be justified, but if, on the other hand, the Union as it existed in 1861 was a compact made by the people of all the States, and our government was a nation as contradistinguished from a mere confederation of States, then your service was the highest and best display of patriotism, and entitles you to the lasting gratitude of all the generations that shall inhabit this fair land.

In 1861 the citizens of the South and of the North were living under one common constitution. All in both sections. had sworn by a solemn oath to support and defend that constitution. If, therefore, the doctrine of secession had any sanction the right must be found in the constitution. Was that right found in that instrument? To determine this question we must look up the language of the constitution itself; at the causes which led up to the adoption of the constitution; at the evils it was designed to remedy, and at the meaning of its terms as understood by the men who framed it.

Prior to its adoption in 1787 it must be remembered that our fathers had already tried their hand in the work of establishing a system of government for the original 13 States, and the articles of confederation, so-called, had been adopted in 1777, the next year after the declaration of independence. These articles continued in force until the new constitution was adopted in 1787 and under them, defective as they were, the war of the revolution had been fought to a successful issue.

It is not surprising that this first attempt to establish a frame of government by the old 13 States, which were then bending all their energies to accomplish their independence of Great Britain, should, on trial, be found to be essentially defective. It must be remembered, too, that the people who inhabited the original States were unlike in their lineage, in their traditions and in their religious belief. In Virginia were the descendants of the Cavaliers who supported Charles I in his mad attempt to subordinate his Parliament to his crown. In Massachusetts were the descendants of the Puritans who beheaded Charles for his crime. In the Carolinas were the descendants of the Huguenot, who was driven from France by Louis XIV, because he claimed the right to worship God according to the dictates of his conscience, while in Maryland were the descendants of the man who applauded Louis for his illiberal policy. In New York were the descendants of the Independent who reviled the customs and the creed of the Quaker, who sought peace with all mankind and counted the behests of conscience more obligatory than the enactments of law; while in Pennsylvania was the Quaker himself, safely anchored in the secure enjoyment of his most cherished belief, under the great charter of William Penn. Any system of government, therefore, formulated by men so differing in sentiment and diverse in dogma, both civil and religious, must necessarily be the product of compromise and be defective in administrative application, and so it proved.

Under the articles of confederation the whole power of governing the people was practically left to the States, and the Union accomplished was the union of states rather than the union of the people of the states in the compact of national government. These articles lacked the element vital to any system of government, namely, authority to enforce governmental decrees. Under them Congress could declare war, but was powerless to raise a dollar in money or summon a man to the field. Every power of any value was retained by the States. In short, State rights, State supremacy was the soul and body of the system.

Everybody saw the weakness of the system and everybody demanded a change, and the change demanded was the