Jerry did some other work besides that of the farm. He ran a threshing machine, bossed a gang of men building a railroad and ran a cooper shop. Whatever work he undertook he did it well. He was a great big, good-natured fellow, with a will strong enough to govern himself and make him a leader of others. I am glad to tell you that he never knew the taste of intoxicating liquors, and never used tobacco. All his companions liked him and had respect for him.

On the 5th of April, 1849, Jerry was married to Miss Mary Martin. Her grandfather, too, had been a soldier in the Revolution. Four years after their marriage the young couple moved to Viroqua, Wisconsin, in what was then called Bad Ax County. There he became a tavern-keeper, landlord of the Buckeye House. Also he ran a threshing machine and became part owner of a stage line from Black River Falls to Prairie du Chien. Some of the time he drove one of the stages himself. He was a very busy young man all the time.

Two years after he had settled at Viroqua the people of the county thought he would make them a good sheriff, and he was elected without opposition. While he was sheriff most of the people in Bad Ax County came to know him well, and they all liked him. In 1861, these same people elected him member of the assembly, and sent him to Madison to help make laws for the state. One of the first things he did was to get a law made changing the name of his county from Bad Ax to Vernon.

When the legislature adjourned in the spring of 1862, Mr. Rusk felt that he ought to go into the army and help save our country from disunion, and so Governor Salomon commissioned him major of the Twenty-fifth Wisconsin Infantry. There never was a braver soldier or better officer. Though his men feared him and obeyed him promptly in all things, they loved him. He was soon promoted to be lieutenant colonel, and was after that brevetted colonel and brigadier general. Men in the army are made officers by brevett for some especially gallant service or daring deed. Some of General Rusk's soldiers are still living, and I hear them tell stories now and then about the heroism, the gallantry, the sturdy character, and withal, the friendly manner and genial good humor of "Uncle Jerry," as they are in the habit of calling him. They say that, while he was as strong as a giant in both body and spirit, he was at the same time as gentle as a woman. While he would have obedience, he governed his soldier boys in a fatherly way. As those boys

loved their sturdy commander in war, they now, as old men, honor his memory.

Five years after the war General Rusk was sent by the people of his district to congress, and there for six years he helped make laws for our country. In 1881 he was elected governor of Wisconsin, and for seven years he was one of the best governors our state ever had. As governor, he had some very difficult matters to manage,-two or three riots to quell; and he did it promptly and positively. In dealing with those disturbances he gave people to understand that the laws of Wisconsin must be obeyed. "He was a governor who governed," and, because of this, good men all over our country came to admire him.

After this there was much talk about making him president of the United States. When Benjamin Harrison came to be president, in 1889, he chose Governor Rusk to be a member of his cabinet, the first man to fill the newly-created office of Secretary of Agriculture. In this new position he did the best of service, just as he always had done since, at the age of sixteen, he began to manage the home farm. Statesmen throughout our country, and even across the sea, came to recognize his ability. He was called by one of our great newspapers, "the nation's Uncle Jerry."

In the fall of 1893, while inspecting land in Illinois, he was taken sick with malaria, and returned to his farm home near Viroqua. For some time it was hoped he would recover, but on the morning of the 21st of November, 1893, he fell asleep, and was laid to rest in the cemetery near his home. Not only the people of his home village, but all Wisconsin and the nation mourned for him.

Henry Casson, an intimate friend of General Rusk, and who wrote his biography, says concerning him: "His home life in Viroqua was of the purest type. In his family circle he was a kind husband and a perfect father. He was the friend of every man, rich or poor, asking of him only that he be honest and law abiding."

Boys and girls, your opportunities are much greater than Jerry Rusk enjoyed. Make the most of them. You cannot all become generals, congressmen or governors. Some of you may never be known far away from home; but you can be just as good and as true as Governor Rusk was.

From a Memorial Address

By Hon. Philander C. Knox cn The Eattlefield of Gettysburg, May 30, 1908.

Man in his weakness thought that this government, founded on the eternal principle of freedom to all, could exist half free and half slave.

But the Almighty, guiding the destinies of the nation, frustrated the weak plans of man, and as the God of battles brought those entrusted with the Nation's life to see that the nation could only survive wholly free. And so Abraham Lincoln, realizing that the time had come to bow to the Supreme will-to that Divine power which had been so ordering the affairs of this nation that the crisis must come, issued the Emancipation Proclamation, declaring that all should be free.

Then the nation took on new life, then her warriors, "thrice armed because they had their quarrel just," inspired by their holy cause, that of union in which every man was free, fought on the side of eternal justice and supreme equity and became an invincible host.

What inspired the four score and ten thousand men of the Union Army to meet in the dreadful shock of battle the hosts of disunion?

What inspired them to rush into the "imminent deadly breach?" What sustained them as they met the onrush of the enemy? What but that love of country that made it glorious to die, that love of liberty that made the patriot's grave his country's shrine?

And so there died upon this field of battle many thousand defenders of the Union-many thousand patriots-many thousand heroes, who offered up their lives a willing sacrifice that this country might be in fact, as in theory, wholly free.

The great victory was won. Eternal justice prevailed. Supreme equity reigned.

Today we survey this field and see with clarified vision all that its tragedies meant. We see the Union saved, the nation established upon the immovable rock of freedom.

The Battle Hymn of the Republic.

Circumstances under which it was written.

In the first year of the Civil War Mrs. Julia Ward Howe visited the city of Washington. During the journey a feeling of discouragement came over her as she thought of the women of her acquaintance whose sons or husbands were fighting for the preservation of the Union. Something seemed to say to her, "You would be glad to serve, but you cannot help anyone; you have nothing to give, there is nothing for you to do."

While at Washington Mrs. Howe was one day invited with her husband and others to attend a review of troops near the city. During the manoeuvers, a sudden movement of the enemy broke up the review and a detachment of soldiers galloped to the assistance of a small body of Union troops who were in danger of being surrounded and cut off from retreat. On the return to the city by a road thronged with soldiers, Mrs. Howe and her party sang snatches of war songs then popular, including

"John Brown's body lies a-mouldering in the ground;

His soul is marching on."

The singing of this song seemed to please the soldiers greatly. Rev. James Freeman Clarke, a member of the party, said, “Mrs. Howe, why do you not write some good words for this stirring tune?" Mrs. Howe replied that she had often wished to do so, but as yet had found nothing in her mind leading toward i*. That night she wrote the Battle Hymn of the Republic, and in "Reminiscences," from which the foregoing has been adapted, she tells the story in the following words:

"I went to bed that night as usual and slept according to my wont, quite soundly. I awoke in the gray of the morning twilight; and as I lay waiting for the dawn, the long lines of the desired poem began to twine themselves in my mind. Having thought out all the stanzas, I said to myself, 'I must get un and write these verses down, lest I fall asleep again and forget them.' So with a sudden effort, I sprang out of bed, and found in the dimness an old stump of a pencil which I remembered tɔ

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