The dedication ceremony on November 15, 1908, included a parade with 15,000 participants, including military and National Guard units, veterans, and civic organizations, including representatives of Tammany Hall Society in their first parade since the Civil War. President-elect William Howard Taft, Secretary of War Luke E. Wright, New York Governor Charles Evans Hughes, New Jersey Governor Franklin Fort, and Delaware Governor Preston Lea watched along with approximately twenty thousand spectators as "the enormous flag draping the Prison Ship Martyrs' Monument on the highest point of Fort Greene Park, Brooklyn, was allowed to slide slowly to the ground from its heighth of 198 feet in the air". The ceremony was opened with a prayer delivered by Rev. S. Parkes Cadman, followed by a poem composed and read by the occasion's poet laureate Thomas Walsh. The principal address was delivered by Taft. He set out in detail the treatment of American prisoners and of the dead he said: "They died because of the cruelty of their immediate custodians and the neglect of those who, in higher authority, were responsible for their detention." He carefully described British culpability: