The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1883-10-18


as those who were in command. So long as
our young men are animated by this spirit
there will be no fear of the Union
1T is our pride to reflect that it was our
citizen soldiery that challenged to mortal
combat any despairing faith in the nations
soldiery for intelligence and intrepidity
never maintained, without guile and with
a pure purpose such cause before. 1t was
true to the very letter as President Lincoln
said: There is scarcely a regiment from
which there could not be selected a Presi-
dent, a cabinet, Congress, and perhaps a
court, abundantly competent to administer
the government ITSELF That, certainly, was
true of every Ohio regiment. The lost cause
embodied false, principles, and therefore,
went where it ought to go, though defended
with the despera. ion of despair, into the last
ditch The pure and incorrupti-
BILE statesman, the laureled scholar the
knlghtly soldier, the grandly patient and
suffering hero, who followed Lincoln in the
honors and responsibilities of the presidency,
and then followed him by the martyrs pang
to the martyrs palm, cried out in the ma
TONS deepest sorrow and dread despair,
God reigns and the government at Wash
ington still lives
II have pity we'll nigh bordering upon
contempt for the man who, in the profes5ed
interests of peace, with false sentimental
ism begotten by trembling, superannuated
a
earthly and divine, attempts to disparage or
degrade the sphere or duty of the American
soldier. The humblest private in the
ranks is the incarnation of the nations dig
nifty, honor and power, and compels due rec
ignition and respect. l do deeply sympa-
t6ize with those who wish to glory in the
thought and in the fact that the American
nation is the 'unarmed nation of the EARTH.
Uuarmed it surely ought to be, as the OPP
posite of the armed nations of the old world
! We want no such armies as they have, draw
ing like cancers the very life from the body
polite. Our standing army is the great
army of workers and thinkers on the farm,
in the workshop, in the store, at the bar, in
the pulpit, in the schools, conquering the
secrets of nature, subduing her vast fertile
plains. leading captive at the chariot wheels
of invention her principalities and powers,
all cheered on in the march of progress with
the silvery song of children, the enthusiast
tic shouts of youth, the gladstone smiles of
woman, and the benedictions of old age. In
the common schools OF our land we must
have not only nurseries but the real West
Points and Fort Leavenworths of the repub-
lie. From them is to come the eyer-howing
stream Of our fresh young soldlery, who
shall maintain from generation to generation
the integrity and glory of the state. II II
1.-THE gospel of liberty could not be pro-
claimed in our day without that fiery Cos
pei writ in FURNISHED rows of steel pro-
pen of Lincoln, greatest of our mighty
dead wrote the emancipation proclamation
the emancipation of serfhood and chattel-
hood to selfhood and citizenship. But our
swords rewrote it, our cannon Numbered it,
our musketry echoed it, our bayonets pune
tuated it, and our final shout of victory put
the irreversible amen to it. In the common
grave where lie the soldiers who fought in
blue and who fought in gray we buried
without the honors of war but with the re-
joiclngs of peace-the common enemies
which had brought them face to face in con-
| flict-the Siamese twins of slavery and State
supremacy. These linked workers of mis-
chief were unlovely and unpleasant in their
lives, and in their death they were not di-
Vided. The ghost of the one flickerS like
lambert flame over the place of entomb-
ment, and the ghost of the other, by stretch
ing the shadowy band which fastens it to its
disuniting companion, is attem pting to steal
abroad again. But the power which buried
their unhallowed forms in the nations con-
secrated ground shall make them down at
its bidding and lay them to rest to await no
resurrection morning.
JEFF. DAVIS.
GA gentleman very prominent in the late
unpleasantness' has been endeavoring to
play the part of ghost-raiser-Mr Jefferson
Davis. He has been as unsuccessful in his
gladiator and uncompromising friend of the
Union, Judge Jere, S. Black, as he was with
the armies of the United States. 1t is one of
the most marvellous exhibitions of the mag
nanlmity and assured strength and position
of mighty nation that it permits the lead
err of the great confederate movement, which
convulsed the continent and shook the
earth, to write book in two volumes on
THE history of the Confederacy," and enjoy
the profits of the sale-that it allows him to
reopen the questions which led to our civil
war, and to attempt to prove in spite of the
logic of reason and of the logic of events, that
South Carolina in the position it assumed
before the war was all right and the govern
ment all wrong. When we remember
that regiments, brigades, divisions. and
whole army corps once marched
along singing Wen hang jeff. Davis to a
sour apple tree, and that the only reason
why the sentiment of the song was not put
into execution was the sheer inability, as
things then were, to make the connection be-
tween the tree and the subject of the song.
Mr.. Davis must certainly share in the feel
ings of the pious old woman who, whenever
she heard of any one who had felt the halter
draw, was wont to eXciaim most earnestly |
What a mercy Pm still alive 1t does seem
like voice from the grave when Mr.. Davis
claims that it was unconstitutional for the
government to call for volunteers to inter- |
fere with the designs and deeds of South Car |
DINA; that it ought to have called out the
militia of South Carolina to attend to the
matter, on the requsition of the Governor
of the State. But if the government had
done that where would have been the Army
of the Tennessee? On the same principle the
warden of prison might we'll call out the
prisoners to suppress an insur-
rection of their jailers. He claims
that the government ought to have
abandoned peaceably Forts Moultrie and
Sumter, in order that the inhabitants of
South Carolina might feel sure that there
was no intention on its part to hurt them if
they should occupy the forts and tear down
4ha Of and ctrirnnc Tho