The Soldiers' journal. (Rendezvous of Distribution, Va.) 1864-1865, 1864-04-20
From the Atlantic Monthly.
Our Soldiers.

and bright. Bells rang out, flags waved, the
people rose as one man to cheer on our troops,
and the practical American nation surveying it.
self with establishment, pronounced itself-fnger
on pulse-enthusiastic and though, in the light
of the present steadily burning determination, it
has been the fashion gently to smile at that quick
up-springing blaze, and at the times wheni was
gravely noted how the privates of our army took
daily baths and wore Colts revolvers, and pet
regiments succumbed under showers of Have
locks, in contrast with the grim official reports
of to-day, I cannot but think that enthusiasm
healthfu1 and in itself lesson, if only that it
proves beyond question that our patriotism
not simply dweller on the American tongue,
but thing of the American heart, so vitalizing
us, so woven every day into the most minute
qualifications of living, so inner and recog-
nized part of our thinking that there have
been found some to doubt it's existence, just as
we half forget the gracious air, because no labor
ed gasps, in place of our sure and even breath
ing, ever by any chance announce to us that
somewhere there have been error and confusion
in its vast workings. ~
Bitterer texts were ready all too soon. When
we heard how one had fallen, bayoneted at the
guns and another was struck, charging on the
foe, and a third had died after long lingering in
the hospital, when we saw our brave boys,
whom we had sent out with huzzas, coming back
to us with the blood and Crime of battle upon
them, MANNED, CHASTITY, dying, dead,-we knew
that we whom God had hitherto so blessed that
we were compelled to look into the annals of
other nations for misery and strife had now.com
menced record of our own. Henceforth there
was for us a new literature, new grooves of
thought new interests BY all the love of father,
brother, husband, and children, we must learn
more of this tragic and tender lore; and our SOL
ders have been thought not far from the heart
and lips of any one of us, and what is done, or
doing. or possible for them, held worthiest of our
thought and time.
Respecting these, we have had all to learn
True, with us, satisfaction has at all times fol-
lowed close upon the announcement of need;
but wisdom in planning and administering is
not marketable commodity, and so we are ed
ucating ourselves up to the emergency,-the
whole mighty nation at school, and learning, we
are bound to say, with Yankee quickness. Love
has been for us also, marvellous brain-prompt-
ter. Some of our grandest charites-I mean
charities in the broadcast and sweetest sense, for
it is we who owe, not our soldiers-have been the
inspiration of a'moments need-thoughts of the
people who in crises and atinstance of the heart,
think well and swiftly. Take this one example.
When New Englands sons seized their arms,
the first to answer the trumpet call that rang out
over the land, and went in the spirit Of their fa~
theirs to the battle,-when these men passed
through Philadelphia, hungry and weary, the
great heart of the city went out to meet Them
Citizens brought them into their houses, the
neighboring shops gave gladly what they could
women came running with food snatched from
their own tables, and even little squaid children
toddled out of by-lanes and alleys with loaves
-H11