The National tribune., 1886-11-18

| night, as Fate would have IL. he slept beneath
the September stars in the bunker graveyard.
where, at the grave Of Katy's mother, he had
put his own mothers ring upen Katy's hand,
aud heard mystic music in the fields.
Now, from the small mountainous ridges,
from the fields ribbed with limestone and the
dropping woods of hickory and oak came the
pipes and bands of vast and organized war
not like the handful Of John Browns followers
caught in the mountains jaws, but landscapes
OF men embroidered between the great quilt
ing-frames of the North and South Mountains;
aud the Antietam brook like ball of blue
yarn, lying on the floor below
At dawn, next day, the bright needles began
their task, and the red and white patches span
gled the rich groundwork; like scissors cut
ting, the she'll and shrapnel clipped the air,
while smoke of burning rags and flesh went up
to God in human sacrifice. It was the domestic
quilting party over domestic slavery.
During that night, thinking of where he
might lie the night to follow, Lloyd Quantrell
imagined he saw on the South Mountain sum-
nit the gaunt form of John Brown demonstrat-
ing with pike upon the great blackboard of
the battlefield and saying. "This, gentlemen,
is the inevitable line of war!"
The battle of Antietam may be likened to
two leOpards lying in a brook, and fighting all
day with their heads and teeth, and not till
near night remembering the terrible claws
upon their hinder feet, when these also do fero-
cous work
AT light of Wednesday morning the flexile
animals began the roar of war, contending for
the bunker church through cornfields and
lanes; and that little temple of the peaceful
Dlppers, standing on white turnpike in the
edge OF beautiful woods was the only Christian
sign TO $4,000 dead or bleeding men who lay
that night beneath the breeze that carried the
symphony of their walls to the old mill wheels
in the creek, which turned as innocently to
blood as TO water. These mills had ground out
flour for Washingtons army and for the French
wars hundred years before
The three arched bridges of the creek typi-
fed TO many burning man the three heads on
Calvary with the hyssop at their lips
In little villages, like Nazareth or Bethlehem
of old, the taxed people crowded to pay PLATE
the currency of blood, and many pale virgin
heard Joseph the carpenters saw all the night
working in human bones.
Artillery had been busy as the talk OF crows
in the standing corn for full days farm
hands work; the volleys of musketry seemed
TO rend the intervening mountains and account
for their present partitioning; the old syca-
mores above the sluggish windings of the creek
calmly slept in the tornado of iron like the
Dunkers in their graves.
How many barn of stone, such as were
scatteIeu over lnaI rOIllng Dattle plateau,
seemed 10 its fugitives of both armies, who
crowded there fraternally, to be the palace Of
Gods abundance until the missile of Christian
chemistry made il burst to flame and be old
Torquemada's sacrifice 10 the faith!
In grassy cross lanes, where the sighs OF pas
toral love had passed in the innocent sight of
nibbling sheep, there lay at morn the specters
of entangled hsdies, swelling TO quick decay,
like the hewed trees upon the mountains and
the corded wood.
BY night the lamps Of good Samaritan and
rOhber moved among the sufferers, hearing the
cry of ~ water" and answering it with rapine;
or the cry for "death," and answering il with
water and with wine.
The whole world contributed to that last
supper TO slavery; the multitudinous tribes
that had swelled by their mutiny and emigra-
tion the as yet unwelded American race dipped
in the sop OF Autietam and sighed in all the
tongues before the PentecOstal day.
The public enemy, with the Potomac at his
back-looped up to his flanks and cinctured by
his pontOOns-held the horizon line above the
creek and watched the three stone bridges of
the Antietam; but only at the far left was
battle given for the Union willingly, and il
seemed in the moral laws Of the world ordained
that the commander who would qualify freedom
in his heart could receive only qualified obedi-
ence. The nearest bridge to Sharpsburg was
not attacked till afternoon, though ordered 70
he taken at dawn; and when that town was
almost taken the returning yctors from Har-
per's Ferry appeared and saved il.
Thus 10000 men had tried a whole day to
destroy each other. upon the issue of two Ma
tions or one-no other moral point was then at
issue.
But the President at Washington had record
ed his vow. The day but two after the battle
he read 10 his Cabinet the Proclamation of
Emancipation, and the Monday after the battle
-washing-da in the State-it was published
TO mankind.
Before it serfdom went down everywhere
The Russian and Brazilian followed the spirit
of old King Frederick, and the American fol-
lowed the exampleo Of Frederick S sword -wearer,
Capt John Brown.
These were the words OF mercy, born out of
the Autumn harvest of the Dunker's vale:
=" On The la day Of January. iH the year Of otT
Lord 1868 an persons held sdues by the people ia
rebellion against The United States shall be then,
tieHocforIUard aud JOrerer free"
The stream Of Dutch immigration moving
down the Cumberland Valley from the Della
ware had prepared the battlefield of emancipa-
tiOn, and verified the proclamation of Mennon-
ties and DunkeTs a century and three quarters
before: We shall doe To all men leke as we
will be done ourselves, making no difference in
what generation, descent, or colour they are."@
In the night the enemy had abandoned Mary
land and crossed the river.
Not long afterward President Lincoln rode
from Frederick City across the mountains in
the month of October TO see these battlefelds-
the nearest to his fame-and they took him to
the mountain farm of John Brown, whence that
outlaw had descended upon Virginia with his
Gideonites nearly three years before in the
same russet month.
The President got down from his carriage in
the lane by the old log hut, aud asked the
privilege Of entering the spot alone.
lie looked within the humble stone base
ment at the bare floor and peeped into the
small, contracted loft.
lie sat in John Browns own room, and the
of his childhood, in such hut as this,
brought back the recollection of his mother and
her barefoot brood.
He thought Of his tanned and hazel-eyed
mother crossing the Ohio TO home as bare as
this among the wild pines and a.little clearing
of Indian corn in the bottoms of Indiana He
thought of her dying when he was only nine
years old and the digging of her lonely grave,
without preacher near 10 see her dear mold
go down beneath the October sycamore; aud of
his desolate father, looking his last upon her
with a sound of inarticulate wo and wringing
hands. The trees without made the same sound
now in the same October weather, saying Indian
things in the afternoon light.
4" Dear mothers of poor boys!" the President
said, "loOk down in pity on the orphans who
have made their way 20 public life in honor of
your characters, and never find the unselfsh
JOY you gave them, even in the sOlace of such
for good as poor John Browns
and mine! Oh, could you tell me, mother,
that / am right and give me the luxury of that
great grief i felt when you were suffering L