f our two
magnificent armies as the way in which the war came to a close. When the
Confederate army saw the time had come, they acknowledged the pitiless
logic of facts and ceased fighting. When the army of the Union saw it
was no longer needed, without a murmur or question, making no terms,
asking no return, in the flush of victory and fulness of might, it laid
down its arms and melted back into the mass of peaceful citizens. There
is no event since the nation was born which has so proved its solid
capacity for self-government. Both sections share equally in that crown
of glory. They had held a debate of incomparable importance and had
fought it out with equal energy. A conclusion had been reached--and it
is to the everlasting honor of both sides that they each knew when the
war was over and the hour of a lasting peace had struck. We may admire
the desperate daring of others who prefer annihilation to compromise,
but the palm of common sense, and, I will say, of enlightened
patriotism, belongs to the men like Grant and Lee, who knew when they
had fought enough for honor and for country.

So it came naturally about that in 1876--the beginning of the second
century of the Republic--he began, by an election to Congress, his
political career. Thereafter for fourteen years this chamber was his
home. I use the word advisedly. Nowhere in the world was he so in
harmony with his environment as here; nowhere else did his mind work
with such full consciousness of its powers. The air of debate was native
to him; here he drank delight of battle with his peers. In after days,
when he drove by this stately pile, or when on rare occasions his duty
called him here, he greeted his old haunts with the affectionate zest of
a child of the house; during all the last ten years of his life, filled
as they were with activity and glory, he never ceased to be homesick for
this hall. When he came to the presidency, there was not a day when his
congressional service was not of use to him. Probably no other president
has been in such full and cordial communion with Congress, if we may
except Lincoln alone. McKinley knew the legislative body thoroughly, its
composition, its methods, its habit of thought. He had the profoundest
respect for its authority and an inflexible belief in the ultimate
rectitude of its purposes. Our history shows how surely an executive
courts disaster and ruin by assuming an attitude of hostility or
distrust to the Legislatu