The Evansville journal. [volume] (Evansville, Ind.) 1866-1870, 1867-07-18
LETTER FROM INDIANAPOLIS.
INDIANAPOLIS, July 16. 1856,

OLIC OQiy III. IOOs'
Editors Journal:
As has already been announced, a
new paper is to be started in this city
on or about the first of next month.
1t is proposed to make the projected
enterprise the organ of the Grand
Army of the Republic. Gen. Dan.
Macauley, Mayor of Indianapolis, is
to be editor-in-chief, and several ink
slingists, of some celebrity, are to IL
Illuminate its columns by both regular
and spasmodic scintillations. With
out expressing any doubt as to the
ability of Gen. Macauley and his as
sociates to make a readable paper,
your correspondent will venture to
predict a brief career for the new or
gan, and will base this prediction on
the fact aptent to every intelligent
observer Of passing events, that there
is no field for such an enterprise.
The members of the G. A. r. are
citizens to all intents and purposes, as
much so to-day as if they had never
shouldered a musket or paraded a
cheese knife" They are affiliated
with other citizens in the social, reli-
gious, and political relations of life,
and have no separate and distinct
theories or policy to advocate. no
separate interests to advance, and
have, therefore, no occasion for an
organ" Almost the entire mem
bership of the G.. A. R., in this State
at least, may be safely counted
with the Union party. The his
tory of that party forbids the
s%upposition that any of the ex-sol-
diers will be denied any of their just
rights. Indeed a military reputation
is so strong an element of popularity.
that it has often suficed to run its
possessor into a fat Office for which he
had few, if any, essential qualifca-
tions. The splendid military career
Of Gen. Macauley made him our
Mayor, though he does not appear to
so good advantage in his present pc
sition, as he did at Opequan, Cedar
Greek and Fishers Hill.
There is much talk of the necessity
of associations, and literature calcula-
ted to perpetuate the sacred memories
of our years of war, memories of our
tolls, privations, sacrifices, and of the
heroic dead; but this is all bosh.
Those who, by special good fortune or
political chicanery, secured high po-
s%itions in the army, will be remem-
bered individually. Their names and
deeds, blazoned with a medley of
truth and falsehood, will be passed
along the n of coming time in
that peculiar species of fiction called
history" But the great mass of
those who served and saved the ma
ton, will be remembered only en-
mosse, with no more individuality of
names or deeds than one has ia
thinking of a hive of bees or the in
habitants of an ant-hill. Gray found
mute, inglorious Milton" and a
Cromwell, guiltless of his country's
blood" in a country church-yard.
1t is probable that there are many in
glorious Shermans and Sheridans ly-
ing in unknown graves along the
paths of our armies, but all the writ
ers in the world cannot write them
into Immortality. We had many a
general who might have learned much,
not only in literature and manners,
but in military tactics and the art of
war, from the private that groomed his
horse or cooked his dinner; but the
ass who wore stars will fill a para
graph in history. while the private
will only help to fill a ditch in Dixie.
If the object of the proposed organ.
is to rescue from oblivion the names
of the thousands of noble men who
died that the Republic might live, it
has a big contract and a worthy aim.
IF it proposes to enter the political
arena it will find a field so pre-occu
pied that there will not be room to
display a single company. A Repub-
lican battery crowns every eminence
on the one side, while the large vol
umes of Democratic Sunday School
Books" occupy every available posi-
ton on the other.
The true place for every soldier
of the G. A. r. is in the Union ranks,
and we can more efficiently serve the
interests of the country in the ap-
preaching contest, by strengthening
organs already in the field, than by
any efforts we may make to establish
new ones. MARK TAPLEY.