History of Buchanan County, Iowa 1842 to 1881
Transcribed by Tommy Joe Fulton and Peggy Hoehne
page 185
LETTER NO. CX.
WASHINGTON'S BIRTHDAY, CAMP REED, 1863.
[A pertinent address to the Twenty-seventh, which does infinite honor to all concerned in its preparation and delivery.]
FRIEND RICH: - . . . This is the anniversary of the birth of Washington. The troops of the district of Jackson were paraded under arms at 11 o'clock A. M., and the following extract from the fare-well address of the father of his country was read:
"To the efficiency and permanency of your Union a government for the whole is indispensable. No alliance, however strict, between the parts can be an adequate substitute. They must inevitably experience the infractions and interruptions which alliances in all times have experienced. Sensible of this momentous truth, you have improved upon your first essay, by the adoption of a constitution of government, better calculated than your former for an intimate union, and for the efficacious management of your common concerns. This government, the offspring of your own choice, uninfluenced and unawed, adopted upon full investigation and mature deliberation, completely free in its principles, in the distribution of its powers, uniting security with energy, and containing within itself provision for its own amendment, has a just claim to your confidence and support. Respect for its authority, compliance with its laws, acquaintance in its measures, are duties enjoined by the fundamental maxims of liberty. The basis of our political system is the right of the people to make and alter their constitutions of government; but the constitution which at any time exists, until changed by an explicit and authentic act of the whole people, is sacredly obligatory upon all. The very idea of the power and the right of the people to establish government, presupposes the duty of every individual to obey the established government."
At 12 o'clock M., a national salute of thirty-four guns was fired. This brigade was reviewed by Colonel C. L. Dunham, of the Fifth Indiana, at 1 o'clock P. M., and thus closed the animating exercises of the anniversary of the great and good Washington.
C. H. L.