New Orleans Republican. [volume] (New Orleans, La) 1867-1878, 1873-06-15
THE AMERICAN SOLDIER.

From "a address of remarkable beauty
and eloquence, delivered on decoration day
at the Academy Of Music, Milwaukee, by
the Rev. Myron w. Reed, late of this city
the following extracts are made:
The soldier has always been held very
| near to the popular heart. We all like to
see a man take risk. A rope-walker cross.
ing the Niagara, will draw multitude. A
nan holding himself by finger or toe forty
feet above an amphithestre, will see pay
] ing house. Let the risk be coupled with
duty, and all men bow. Duty held to, on
burning boat or plunging engine, or before
shotted gums, is the finest thing we have to
show. A drunken sailor plunges in to save
one he never saw till drowning. and is
washed ashore dead, and all the afternoon
the crowd gathers with sort Of homage
around him, whom in the morning they
counted a nuisance. The fine stories of the
| world are made of these dangerous, dutitul
| facts. Horace Maynard, burning at the
wheel on Lake Champlain, and the captain
OF the North1eet are not common dust
Stories of these men reconcile one to being
human.
1t has been said on this stage tina. ".he
pen is mightier than the sword" That
sounds well; but except the sword writes
first, how little for the pen to do. Take
the battle out of history and poetry, and
what have you Blot out the siege of Troy,
and where are your Eneiads and Iliads
With the Crusades go the Crusaders hymn
and wondrous story. Could the proclama-
tiOn Of emancipation be written except
behind great guns! Take away from the
historian Leonidas, Scipio, Cesar Richard,
Crom well, Nelson; blot out Napoleon; fiji
up the pass Of Thermopyla; bury the rock
CT Salamis, and level Bunker Hill and Mis-
sion Ridge-iron all the wrinkles out of
Kenesaw-keep all of the flags Of the
nations new and clean, innocent Of smoke
and rust, and then ask him to write What
measure or beat can there be in the history
OF time when the drum does not throb!
There are many villages as fair to see as
Concord, but there are the piers of bridge
the bridge between the colonies of Great
Britain anu the thirteen free and independ-
ent States. ! stand here tonight to thank
the men who put meaning into the land
scape. The boys you knew, fast asleep
within mornings walk, heard music that
the continentals never heard. The voice of
Lexington was as the cong Of the sparrow
TO this later, awful voice that warned our
heroes back. 1t is no longer a dim tradi-
ton with us that men are brave. Courage
was like the name of your sweetheart,
which, cut into the bark of a sapling, had
been grown over as the sapling became a
tree The war brought that word again
from The heart, 20 that men might read it,
1t was a revival Of the whole man. Never
were such speeches made-never such let
tiers written. There was some sort Of .
Patrick Henry in every school district
can see again the face Of the first man
killed in action. The whole meaning OF the
great eacritice was plain. Men will never
feel SO dependent again. The war bred
selfreliance, and self that could be relied |
To lox -,
the better man Of the present.
Of those whose lot it was to die, whose |
graves we have visited they were generous
they made no bargain with US that we |
shonld remember them. / hear that there |
is some talk of forgetting them. Well, if |
any man thinks so, the next tine let him |
do the dying himself. We do right and a |
prudent thing not to forget beneft-to |
it. not grudgingly, but gladly |
and proudly.
More tears are shed over those who live.
and live meanly, than over those who flung
themselves between the republic and her !
death. In these days Of low tide, when we
seem to have sunk back to the old level |
days of too much Pomeroy-it is refreshing
to think of those who are safe. shrouded in
sweet sleep of duty done. They have usti- |
fed American manhood in the face Of all |
the world. The flag of the nation is no |
longer the plaything of festal day. 1t is !
torn and biaclsened; it has been borne tr;. |
umphant to the sea; it has come home |
wrapped about the breast of its dead de. !
tenders. 1t is a bundle of rags, but the
mystery Of whose charm no foreign nation |
VIII ever dare to explore, OF these men
who gave their lives to gain it its power |
what more shall say duncan is in his |
grave. After life's ftful fever he sleeps |
well. Treason has done its worst. Nor |
steel, nor poison, malice domestic, foreign |
levy, nothing can touch him further" The |
ranks being opened. they have gone to the |
e xtIeme right of Plutarch's battalion of he |
roes. |
On Fame's eternal camping ground |
Their silent tents spread
While glory guards with solemn sound
The blvouac OF the dead.
We give them rosemary, that's for re.
mem brance; and panses. that's for thoughts. |
And thank God that He has in HIS good. |
ness contrived language for love. carved |
beauty for ashes that will fill up what is |
behindhand in this poor wreath of words |
which l have braided as well as l could, |
a nd now lay. not on their heads as q crown,
0 III at their feet as my worship.