The Maryville times. (Maryville, Tenn.) 1884-1944, 1891-06-17


the north and the plantations of the
south multitude that no man can NUN
Der, children without fathcrly help and
protection?
Under al the advantages which we
had of fatherly guidance, what strug-
gle life has beer to most of us! But
what of the children two and five and
ten years of age, who stood at their
mothers lap, with great, round, Won
dering eyes, hearing her read of those
who persisted in the battle of the wilder
ness, their father gone down amid the
dead host? Come, young mep and
women, who by such disasters have had
to make your own way in life, and l
will put the garland on your brow
Yes, you have had your own Malvern
hill and your own South mountain and
your own Gettysburg all along these
twenty years. Come! And, if can not
spare whole garland for your brow, /
will twist in your locks at least two
flowers, one crimson and one white
The crimson for the struggle of you
life, which has almost amounted to
carnage, and the white for the victory
you have gained
Before I put the two garlasds am
twisting upon the northern and south
ern tombs, detain the garlands little
while that ! may put them upon the
brow of the living soldier of the north
and south, who, though in variance for
a long while, are now at peace and in
hearty loyalty to the United States gov
eminent, and ready, if need be, to
march shoulder to shoulder against any
foreign foe. The twenty-six winters
that have passed since the war, l think,
have sufficiently cooled the hatreds that
once burned northward and southwark
to allow the remark that they who
fought in that conflict were honest on
both sides. The chaplains of both
armies were honest in their prayers.
The faces that went into bat
tie, whether they marched toward
the Gulf of Mexico or marched
toward the north star, We're honest
faces. 1t is too much to ask either side
to believe that those who came out
from their homes, forsaking father and
mother, and wife and child, many of
them never to return, were not in earn
est when they put their life into the
awful exigency. Witness the last scene
at family prayers up among the green
mountains or down by the fields of cot
ton and sugar cane. Men do not sacri-
fee their all for fun. Men do not eat
moldy bread or go without bread at all
for fun. Men do not sleep unsheltered
in equinoctial storms for fun. There
were some no doubt on both sides who
enlisted for soldiers pay or expecting
opportunity for violence and pillage or
burning with revenge and thirst for hui
man blood, but such cases were SO rare
many of you who were in the war four
years never confronted such an instance
of depravity.
AS chaplain of a Pennsylvania regi-
ment and as representative of the
United States Christian Commission,
was for a while at the front, and in those
hospitals at Hsgerstown and Williams
burg and up and down the Potomac,
where all the churches and farm houses
were filed with wounded and dying
federals and confederates, l forgot
amid the horrors to ask on which side
they fought, when with what little aid
l could take them for their suffering
bodies and the mightier aid l could pray
for their souls, l passed the days and
months amid scenes that in my memory
seem like a CHASTITY dream rather thar
possible reality. When a New Orleans
boy, unable to answer my questions as
to where he was hurt, took out from
the folds of the only garment that hat
not been torn off him in the battle G
New Testament marked with bis owr
life-blood and l saw the leaf turned
down at the passage: "My peace ! give
unto you, not as the world giveth give
unto you," it read just as though it ha(
been a northern New Testament
And when I sat down and took from {
South Carolinian dying in barn a
Bonneville his last message to his wife
and mother and child, it sounded jus
like message that northern man dy
ing far from home would send to hi
wife and mother and child And whel
l picked up from the battlefield o
Antietam the fragment of a letter
have somewhere yet, for the name an,
the address were torn of, l saw it wa
the words of wife to her hus band tell
ing him how the little child prayed TO
their father every night that he nigh
not get hurt in the battle and nigh
come home sound and come home well
but that if any thing happened to then
they might all meet again in the worl'
, where there are no partings,
read Just as a northern wife woult
w. lite to husband away from HON
ana IN peril conveying the messages Q
little children. Oh, yes, they wer
honest On both sides. And those VIII
lived t0 get home and are living yc
were just as honest, ard ought they nc
for the suffering they endured have
coronal of some kinds
Yea, there gas cou, age on both sides
They who wer,s at the front know that
When the war opened, the south Gale
the northern meN ''mudsills," and tn
north called the sLYthern men 'brae
CARTS and 'pompoLs nothings," br
after few battles n.thipg more wa
said about northern g,udsills" an
southern "braggarts." Ii was an arm
of lions against an army # lions.
was flock of eagles mid-slSy with iro
beak against another flock IF eagle
iron beaked. 1t was thunderboh again,
thunderbolt 1t was archangel OF wrat
against archangel of wrath. II, W;
Hancock against Longstreet II va
| Eilpatricl apainst Wade Hampton,