Transcriber’s Note: The cover image was createdfrom the blank cover and the pamphlet cover by the transcriber and isplaced in the public domain.
ADDRESS OF THE PRESIDENT AT
THE UNVEILING OF THE MONUMENT
TO GENERAL SHERIDAN
WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 25, 1908
WASHINGTON
GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
1908
It is eminently fitting that the Nation’sillustrious men, the men wholoom as heroes before the eyes of ourpeople, should be fittingly commemoratedhere at the National Capital, andI am glad indeed to take part in theunveiling of this statue to GeneralSheridan. His name will always standhigh on the list of American worthies.[2]Not only was he a great general, but heshowed his greatness with that touch oforiginality which we call genius. Indeedthis quality of brilliance has been in onesense a disadvantage to his reputation, forit has tended to overshadow his solidability. We tend to think of him only asthe dashing cavalry leader, whereas hewas in reality not only that, but also agreat commander. Of course, the fact inhis career most readily recognized was hismastery in the necessarily modern art of[3]handling masses of modern cavalry so asto give them the fullest possible effect,not only in the ordinary operations ofcavalry which precede and follow a battle,but in the battle itself. But in addition heshowed in the civil war that he was afirst-class army commander, both as asubordinate of Grant and when in independentcommand. His record in theValley campaign, and again from FiveForks to Appomattox, is one difficult toparallel in military history. After the close[4]of the great war, in a field where there wasscant glory to be won by the general inchief, he rendered a signal service which hasgone almost unnoticed; for in the tediousweary Indian wars on the Great Plainsit was he who developed in thorough-goingfashion the system of campaigningin winter, which, at the cost of bitterhardship and peril, finally broke downthe banded strength of those formidablewarriors, the horse Indians.
His career was typically American, for[5]from plain beginnings he rose to thehighest military position in our land.We honor his memory itself; and moreover,as in the case of the other greatcommanders of his day, his career symbolizesthe careers of all those men whoin the years of the nation’s direst needsprang to the front to risk everything,including life itself, and to spend the daysof their strongest young manhood invalorous conflict for an ideal. Often weAmericans are taunted with having only[6]a material