ADDRESS, REDEDICATION OF CONFEDERATE CEMETERY

HAGERSTOWN
September 3, 1961

We are today commemorating a series of events which happened one
hundred years ago. Notwithstanding, I am going to begin this address
by asking you to cast your memories back not one century, but two.
For it was almost 200 years ago that there was performed the first
official public act to assert the freedom of the American people. That
act took place here, in Western Maryland. November 25, 1767, the
citizens of our neighboring county, Frederick, solemnly and by due court
action, repudiated the unjust tax laws levied on the American colonies
by Great Britain.

So began a century in which the United States was born and was
firmly set upon a course that promised a new order for the whole of
mankind. Viewing those 100 years with the understanding that our
present day gives us, we can see that that claim is not too great. In its
birth, our nation offered hope to the formerly hopeless and its century of
growth and success turned that hope into courage and emulation.
Then—also here in Western Maryland—occurred another act of vast
consequence, the act that, more than any other single one, precipitated
the American Civil War—the plotting of the wild enterprise known as
John Brown's raid. After that, for four years, the life of our country
hung in the balance.

To the world, looking on as we fought our fratricidal strife, more was
at stake than the existence of a single government. The real question
was the survival or cessation of the original ideal to which the United
States was dedicated—what we now call the democratic way of life. It
is my purpose to review today the contributions our State made to the
ultimate decision. I do not think that the greatest of these is to be
counted in war materials, or—even—in soldiers, in men. Rather, it was
in the philosophy with which our State historically was imbued. This
brought us through the furious—and often infuriating—shocks of war.
This saved us from the all-too-natural post-war bitterness.

We may go far back in our history—back to its very beginning—and
find that we have always been a community in which there are groups,
normally opposed to one another, living in deliberately determined con-
cord. The Maryland custom did not begin in the field of politics. It
began hi that of religion, for in the 17th century, when our land was
first settled, religion was the great preoccupation. Many, very many of

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