"Let no vandalism of avarice or neglect, no ravages of time, testify to the present or to the coming generations, that we have forgotten, as a people, the cost of a free and undivided Republic"

A solemn warning against forgetting, the line urges vigilance so that greed, indifference, and simple decay do not become public proof that the nation has lost sight of what it took to secure liberty and unity. Memory is not treated as a private sentiment but as a civic infrastructure: monuments, graves, institutions, and shared rituals that teach the living and the unborn what was paid to make a free and undivided Republic possible.

“Vandalism of avarice” points beyond literal defacement. It condemns the way profit-seeking can erode public remembrance, defunding cemeteries and archives, commodifying sacrifice, or treating common memory as expendable. Neglect names a quieter danger: the laziness that lets weeds overrun graves, allows histories to fade from classrooms, or shrugs at the erosion of civic norms. Time, too, does its honest work of wearing down stone and story. But the appeal insists that a responsible people meet time’s wear with care, repair, and renewal.

What is visible to the eye becomes testimony to the heart. Crumbling markers, unkept grounds, and ceremonies abandoned signal to children that sacrifice is disposable. The inverse is also true: tended places, upheld traditions, and honest teaching proclaim endurance. The phrase “as a people” stresses shared obligation, beyond parties and personalities, to maintain both the physical sites of remembrance and the moral commitments they embody.

The “cost” named is not only blood shed in defense of the Union but the daily price of preserving freedom: patience with pluralism, fidelity to law, generosity toward veterans and the fallen, and the courage to place common good over faction. Remembering that price is a restraint on cynicism and a guide for public action.

To honor it, preserve the stones and the spirit. Fund the caretaking. Teach the history in full. Resist profiteering that cheapens memory. Guard institutions that keep liberty and union together. Let care, not decay, be what the future reads of us.