have preceded us in the line of march to the silent shores, we shed the tear of affectionate remembrance, as echo gives praises to their memory and honor to their dust. Throughout the broad area of the world there never was a field more rich in facts which constitute the fibre of an earnest, active patriotism, than that found in the Southern struggle. And the lofty admiration in which your manhood, valor, and endurance, as well as the sublime resignation with which you accepted disappointment, after great hopes and greater efforts, are held all over the world, shows how much the world yet values true and brave men, who could shake off troubles as great as these were, and by heroic efforts, in a time of peace, make them, to an impoverished country, but as flaxen withs bound around a slumbering giant. What wonder the world has stood amazed at the persistent vitality of our people? for, under your admirable conduct, every barrier to the flow of capital, or check to the development of our unbounded resources, was removed. We see here, to-day, a free and independent mingling of men from every section of our broad domain, all prejudices of the past forgotten; and while our State has been fortunate in acquiring thousands of those who fought against us, and who are an honor both to the States which gave them birth, and ours which they have made their home, it matters not whence they come; they can exult in the reflection that our Country is the same, and they find floating here, the same banner that waved above them there, with its broad folds unrent, and its bright stars unobscured; and in its defence, if needs be, the swords of those old Confederates, so recently sheathed, would leap forth with equal alacrity with those of the North. No nobler emotion can fill the breast of any man than that which prompts him to utter honest praise of an adversary, whose convictions and opinions are at war with his own; and where is there a Confederate soldier in our land who has not felt a thrill of generous admiration and applause for the pre-eminent heroism of the gallant Federal admiral, who lashed himself to the mainmast, while the tattered sails and frayed cordage of his vessel were being shot away by piecemeal above his head, and slowly but surely picked his way through sunken reefs of torpedoes, whose destructive powers consigned many of his luck less comrades to watery graves? The fame of such men as Farragut, Stanley, Hood, and Lee, and the hundreds of private soldiers who were the true heroes of the war, belongs to no time or section, but is the common property of mankind. They were all cast in the same grand mould of self-sacrificing patriotism, and I intend to teach my children to revere their names as long as the love of country is respected as a noble sentiment in the human breast. It is a remarkable fact that those who bore the brunt of the battle were the first to forget old animosities and consign to oblivion obsolete issues. They saw that nothing but sorrow and shame, and the loss of the respect of the world, was to be gained by perpetuating the bitterness of past strife; and, im pelled by a spirit of patriotism, they were willing, by all possible methods, to create and give utterance to a public sentiment which would best conserve our common institutions and restore that fraternal concord in which the war of the Revolution left us, and the Federal Constitution found us. And I emphasize the declaration that, in most instances, those whose hatred has remained implacable, through all these years of peace, are men who held high carnival in the rear, and, after all danger had passed, emerged from their hiding-places, filled with ferocious zeal and courage, blind to every principle of wise statesmanship, to make amends for lack of deeds of valor by pressing to their lips the sweet cup of revenge, for whose intoxicating contents our country has already paid a price that would have purchased the goblet of the Egyptian queen. LAWRENCE SULLIVAN Ross. LET US REJOICE TOGETHER. (Extract from Address upon "Immortal Memories," furnished for the "Patriotic Reader.") MORE than twenty years have passed since the last great battle in our civil contest was fought. The mighty armies of the nation have long since folded their torn banners, stacked their muskets, and doffed their uniforms. The bugles that of old sounded the charge, and the drums that beat to battle, are now silent. The blades that flashed, and the bayonets that gleamed above their surging columns, no longer catch the sunlight. Grass grows in the fields whereon they struggled, and the rustle of ripened grain is heard where, but a while ago, the ring of steel made music that set men's blood aflame. What was our war? How should it be looked upon? It was not the result of men's ambition, North or South. It was not a contest for territory. It could not have been prevented, although it might have been postponed, by the action of any political party. Our war was simply fighting out, upon a new field, and under more enlightened auspices, a contest that had been waged for centuries among the people from whose loins we sprung. It was the clash of two civilizations, so antagonistic in their conceptions, so antipodal in their means and methods of development, as to make impossible harmony of action, or peaceful growth side by side. The North and South were in direct opposition, as to the best methods of governing and perpetuating the heritage left them by their fathers. Their conceptions were so radically different, that peaceful measures could not adjust or reconcile them. One or the other must yield. War came! The land that had known but peace echoed to the tread of armed men! Up from the land of the orange and the myrtle came mighty hosts, harnessed for conflict, chanting songs of battle, eager for the fight, sweeping with as fiery courage and as dauntless bearing to the onset as of old the men from out whose loins they sprung charged Saracenic hosts, or closed in deadly grapple with the knightly sons of France. From the land of the fir and the pine, down from its mountains and out from its valleys, glittering with steel, and bright with countless banners, steady and strong, the men of the North marched to the conflict. A hush as of death filled the land, as the mighty hosts confronted each other. An instant,-and the heavens seemed rent asunder, and the solid globe to reel. North and South had met in the shock of war! Blood deluged the land; the ear of pity deaf; the springs of love dried up; the throb of mighty guns; the gleam of myriad blades; the savage shouts of men grap pling each other in relentless clutch; Death, pale, pitiless, tireless, thrusting his awful sickle into harvest-fields where the grain was human life; bells from every steeple in the land tolling out their solemn notes of sorrow for the slain; fathers, mothers, wives, and little ones smiting their palms in agony together, as they looked upon the features of their loved ones marbled in the eternal sleep! For four long bitter years the mighty tide of war rolled through the land, engulfing in its crimson flood the best and bravest of the North and South, bearing their souls outwards, with resistless sweep, to that dread sea whose shores, to human eyes, are viewless, whose sombre waves are ever chanting solemn requiems for the dead! In this wild storm of war the banners of the South went down. The bells of liberty through all the land rang out a joyous peal of welcome, and guns from fortress, field, and citadel thundered greeting to the hour that proclaimed America one and indivisible. From southern gulf to northern lakes, from northern lakes to Atlantic and Pacific coasts, we were ONE. The Mississippi flowed not along the borders of a dozen empires; the blue waters of the lakes beat not upon the shores of rival governments; the mountains of the land frowned not down upon hostile territories; the ocean bore not upon its bosom the fleets of contending States; but over all the land a single flag threw out its folds, symbol of victory, index of a reunited people. We recall the glories and the triumphs of the Union, not for the purpose of humiliating the gallant souls that battled against us. In the providence of God, the struggle they made to rend us asunder has but strengthened the bonds of our union. Those who fought against us are now of us, and enjoy the countless blessings that have come from the triumph of the Union, and with us they should bow their heads and reverently acknowledge that above all the desires of men move the majestic laws of God, evolving, alike from victory or defeat of nations, substantial good for all His children. GEORGE AUGUSTUS SHERIDAN. THE BLUE AND THE GRAY. (Written in 1867, when the women of Columbus, Mississippi, strewed dowers impartially on the graves of Confederate and Federal soldiers, and by the courtesy of Ivison, Blakeman & Co., of New York, adopted from "Swinton's Fifth Reader.") By the flow of the inland river, Whence the fleets of iron have fled, Under the sod and the dew, Waiting the judgment-day: These, in the robings of glory; Under the willow, the Gray. From the silence of sorrowful hours, Lovingly laden with flowers, Alike for the friend and the foe, Under the sod and the dew, So, with an equal splendor, Waiting the judgment-day: |