The National tribune. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1877-1917, 1883-12-20
THE NATIONAL TRIBUNE WASHINGTON THURSDAY

flashes in the midst of a. devastating storm.
David and Jonathan loved each other as they
did with q love surprising that of woman, be-
cause they had stood side by side in battle, and
in some supreme moment of common danger
had seen one another as they could not in scores
of years of peaceful life. o.
Ali of us have known Instances in our own
experiences where in oinoment some dull,
common place fellowiiias lifted himself in our
estimation to a place among the princes of the
earth. We have all marched for weeks and
months with comrades whom we have looked
down upon as selfish, smaH-natured, and weak,
until come moment of .baBtle came, when they
stood forth TRANSPORTED into heroes. 1t was
so all through the army Every of us
who went through the struggle came out of it
with grand pride in our fellow-men. Every
where we were astonished by exhibitions of
courage, manliness, and lofty self-sacrifice by
boys who a little while BEFORE were squabbling
over the games of the playground, and mainly
intent upon the more Or less impish tricks of
school urehinS.
OUR AMERICAN BOYS.
The battle of Shiloh was q magnificent Illus
tfation of this There 10000 American boys
thousands of whom had not been out of the
school room two months-stood UP resolutely
on an open plain and fired into one anothers'
unprotected breasts until over 10000 were
stretched upon the ground. Nowhere in mod
ern history was there such grim, bloody fight
ing as that done by what was little better than
mob of undisciplined school boys on that
fearful 9Th and 18th of April, 1862. The finest
armies in Europe never received or inflicted
such awful punishment as both the Union and
rebel armies endured without flinching in the
death grapple for Pittsburg Landing. French
or German army would have been considered
annihilated if it had suffered anything like the
losses endured by those under Grants and
Beauregard's command.
Another episode of the war, in which the
Buckeye State had most direct interest, was
the ill-fated expedition sent out by General
Mitchell in 1862 to burn the bridges south of
Chattanooga. That party was made up almost
wholly of plain, every day Ohio farmer boys
who made no pretensions to unusual courage,
and had no thought of any reward. To help
the cause along was al they desired, and they
were ready to undertake anything that would
contribute to that end as cooly and unostenta-
tiously as they would set about harvesting the
acres upon the homestead.
Yet on no page of romance is there q story of
more desperate daring. High-born knights
could well be proud of such deeds as theirs,
and in monarchy they would have been re-
warded with deeorationsand patents of nobility.
But those who survived steadfastly refused to
believe that they had done anything more than
their plain duty, and several of them even re-
fused the commissions which were offered and
took their old places in the ranks with musket
and knapsack.
UNKNOWN HEROES.
One of these unknown heroes-the engineer
of the party. who drove the locomotive with
such unquailing courage-called to see me q
few years ago. He told me that. while con-
fined in the jail at Atlanta, he, with the four
teen others that had not yet been hanged made
desperate assault on the guards with stones
and brickbats, drove them off, and escaped, he
and his partner walking 400 miles through the
rebel country before they reached our lines.
He is not fluent talker, and l had some diff
Guilty in drawing him oats
That was pretty risky business" | said,
attacking armed guards with brickbats"
Eyes, he answered slowly; "but and
then with the air Of imparting something to
me confdentially-" you see I'm very nery-
Gus man, and the thought of being hung was
always quite dreadful to me-"
| l told him that / had known that sort OF
thing to produce qualitiesin men that were not
/ specially nervous.
! Among my schoolnlates was headed
little fellow. who had no special characteristics
/ unless it was fondness for playing marbles
| and running of to go In swimming. When
! General Hunter was soreIy be5et in the Shen-
andoah Valley and the loss of his army immi-
nent, he devised stratege1n to mislead the
| enemy by sending out a.courier carrying out
/ false information to be captured. Though this
| schoolmate knew as well as anyone that the
/ duty involved great danger of murder by the
i lurking bushwhackers along the road, and still
/ greater of dying by starvation in Anderson
ville he was of the first TO volunteer for it
and died in Andersonville some weeks after
/ his capture.
Every day that / spent in prison furnished
me with some new illustration of the nobility
/ of character which was almost universal in
those around me- Boys might be proYokingly
small, selfish, and disagreeable in minor
matters but when it came TO the grander re
/ quirements of manhood-to courage, loyalty
and steadfastness even unto death-eyery one
of them filed the highest measure of heroism