Burlington weekly free press. [volume] (Burlington, Vt.) 1866-1928, 1885-06-05

The rebellion of 1861 was in fact war
of civilizations, and the differing patriot
isms which inspired the sons of the free
and slave States were the outgrowths of
those differing civilizations. The patriot
ism of the North was national, that of the
South sectional. Fealty to their own
states was indeed the excuse of those who
! followed their states into the Slaveholding
confederacy in arms against the national
! flag under which they were born, but the
real inspiration of their action was their
attachment to slavery and their interest
| in its perpetuatiOn for the border slave
states, though forced to remain in the
union, still furnished to the confederacy
thousands of soldiers as devoted and
| loyal to the Southern cause as those who
were citizens of the State, which had
actually joined the confederacy. Indeed
the line of demarcation followed the same
natural laws of division which | have al
ready set forth. The interests, and con
sequently the duties of the North extend
ed over the whole territory of the United
States, with, or without slavery the
interests of the South, and consequently
their duties as they viewed them, were
centered III slavery. War was the inevita-
bic result and the broader and higher in
tercst was triumphant. The sectional
/ patriotism of the south, strong as it was,
/ proved no match for the national patrio-
/ tiSm of the North.
In considering the duties which nation
]
/ generation that came to maturity in the
/ height of the slavery agitation are too apt
to forget that the barrier between North
ern and southern patriotism is broken
down, or else the war for the Union was Il
failure, and we who fought but fought in
vain. North and South there still exists
/ too much diStrust of each other. Our in
terests, our duties, our responsibilities
are one, and our patriotism should be
one. Twenty years have passed since the
last shot was fired. Nature has covered
up with her healing hand all traces of that
conflict on the battlelieldS OF the war,
and the growing generations that even
now are fast crOwding us from out the
charge of public affairs, have had no cause
to become imbued with the differing pat
riOtisms of the past Softened indeed have
| become the harsh feelings that existed at
the close of the war, but every once in a
while there bursts forth, North or South,
some irrecOncilable relic of anti-bellum
days. IN bitterest invective against the
section that late opposed him. Like as
some shell that has long lain buried on
battlefield is by chance unearthed to burst
! with undated force years after its mis-
sion has been fulfilled, so are these irrec-
oncilable relics dug up by chance, from
time to time, to blow with old-time vigor
the blast of war, when all is peace around.
| Like the belated shell, too these relics gen
orally failed to do any execution when
]
well as effective
/ The world moves, and soon. Very soon,
our country will be in the hands Of that
/ living majority to whom the story of the
great civil war will be II lesson OF their
school boy DAYS, and a tale of their fire
side traditions. We, the survivors Of that
great conflict, while chcrishing the glUr-
/ iOus memories of the past, must turn our
/ thoughts to the living present, and to that
near future, when those who are
to come after MS shall bear an
| riOtiSm grows more thoroughly national
in America, day by day. The distinctive
| term, Northerner or Southerner, so com
! mon before the war, is seldom heard now
and we who We're born when differing
patriOtisms divided the land, must extend
/ the scope of our love of country, or be sent
| to the rear as relics of IL past that is dead.
1t has been often remarked that the sol
dierS of the late war; mean those who
took part in the actual hostilities, both
federal and confederate-Were the first to
express a genuine feeling of reconciliation
and Il Willingness to Jointly uphold, in the
/ future, the reunited sections of our cOuu-
try by common patriotism. There is
nothing strange in this. If there is any
one thing that brave man loves and re
SpectS, 1t Is another brave man, be he
friend or be he foe. 1t is perfectly natural
that men who for four long years had fol-
lowed each other many, many weary miles
by day and by night, through heat and
cold and wet and storm, hunting each
others lives in field, in mountain and in
thicket-it is perfectly natural that these
men should feel thorough respect for
each other, when the differences they had
fought for have at last been buried in
fraternal peace. Many have been the
pleasant reunions between brave men of
North and South when they have met by
chance in the paths of peace, and found
that in the great day of strife they had
often been pltted against each other, and
had lodged each others bullets on picket
post, perhaps for months together.
But Il few weeks since the veterans of
the Army of the Potomac and of the
Army of Northern Nirgina-the blue and
the gray-met in fraternal greeting in
that very border State city, where was
spilled the first blood in the rebellion.
Taking into consideration the hot tenn
per OF the southern people, and the natu-
raj disinclination of Il vanqushed people
to fraternlze with their conquerors. it is
but just to the soldiers of the late confed-
cracy to say that they have far exceeded
the expectations of the North in the evil
dent sincerity with which they have sur
rendered the sectional patriotism of their
youth to assume the national patriotism
of the North. In the earlier days of this
year when the wires flashed over the
country the sad announcement that the
grand old commander was on the brink of
the grave, and that his death might occur
at any hour, no sinCcrer sympathy was
evoked that that which Welied up spon-
taneOusly from those who surrendered to
the maguanimOus warrior at AppOmattON
Court House. Brave and unrelenting
while dealing with foes in arms, he was
KIND and generous to those same foes
when they had fallen before him. Even
that arch rebel, who was the recognized
exponent of Southern patriotism during
the war, who had never emerged from his
retirement except to reaSsert the justice of
southern views, and whose pride it had
been for twenty years that he bore in his
own person the sins and the sorrows of
the Lost CauSen-eVen that arch rebel
sent II letter Of sympathy to the man
whose military genius had blasted the
Confederate chiettaln's ambition to shine
in history as the founder of IA great repub-
lie, and had left him stranded among that
throng Of unlortunates who are remem-
bered for their follies and for their mis-
takes alone. What Il panorama must
have passed before the mind of jefferson
Davis when he penned that letter of sym
DathV to "A man with whom i'm early life