The Bolivar bulletin. (Bolivar, Tenn.) 1888-1946, 1891-06-12

come, young men and women VINO Dy
such disaster have had to make your
own way in life, and / viii put the gar
land on your young and unwrinkled
brow. Yes; You have had your own
Malvern Hill and your own South
Mountain and your own Gettysburg
all along these twenty years Comet
And, if ] can not spare a whole garland
for your brow, I will twist in your
locks at least two flowers, one crimson
and one white, the crimson for the
struggle of your life which has almost
amounted to carnage, and the white for
the victory you have gained.
Before / put the two garlands / am
twisting upon the northern and south
ern tombs, I detain the garlands a lit
tie while, that l may put them on the
brow of the living soldiers and sailors
of the north and south, who, though in
variance for a long while, are now at
peace and in loyalty to the United
States government, and ready if needs
be to march shoulder to shoulder
against any foreign foe. The twenty
six winters that have passed since the
war, I think, have sufficiently cooled
the hatreds that once burned north
ward and southwark to allow the re-
mark that they who fought in that con-
hict were honest on both sides. The
chaplains of both armies were honest
in their prayers. The faces that went
into battle, whether they marched to-
ward the gulf of Mexico or marched
toward the north star were honest faces.
It is too much to ask either side to be-
lieve that those who came out from
their homes, forsahing father and
mother and wife and child, many of them
never TO return, were not in earnest
when they put their life into 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-
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
human blood, but such cases were so
rare many of you who were in the war
four years never confronted such an in
stance of deparvity.
As chaplain of a Pennsylvania regi-
ment and as a representative of the
United States Christian commission, I
was for a while at the front and in
those hospitals at Hagerstown and
Williamsburg and up and down the
Potomac, where all the churches and
farm houses were filed with wounded
and dying federals and confederates, /
forgot amid the horrors to ask on which
side they fought, when with what little
aid / could take them for their suffer
ing bodies and the mightier aid / could
pray for their souls, l passed the days
and months amid scenes hat in my
memory seem like a CHASTITY dream
rather than possible reality. When
a New Orleans boy, unable to
answer my question as to where
he was hurt, took out from the
fold of the only garment that had
not been torn off him in the battle a
New Testament marked with his own
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" 1t read just as though
it had been a northern New Testa-
ment. And when / sat down and took
from a South Carolinian, dying in a
barn at Bonneville, his last message
to his wife and mother and child, it
sounded just like a message hat a
northern man dying far from home
would send to his wife and mother and
child. And when / picked up from the
battlefield of Antietam the fragment
of a letter which I have somewhere
yet, for the name and the address were
torn off, Isawit was the words of a wife
to her husband, telling him how the
little child prayed for their father every
night that he might not get hurt in the
battle, and might come home sound and
come home well. but that if anything
happened to them they might all meet
again in the world where there are no
partings, it read just as a northern wife
would write to a husband away from
home and in peril, conveying the mes
sages of little children. Oh, yes; they
were honest on both sides. And those
who lived to get home and are living
yet were just as honest, and ought they
not for the suffering they endured have
a coronal of some kind?
Yes, there was courage on both sides.
They who were at the front know that.
When the war opened the south called
the northern men ''mudsills," and the
north called the southern men ''brag-
CARTS" and '-pompous nothings," but
after a few battles nothing more was
said about northern 'Fmudsills' and
southern 'braggarts." 1t was an
lions. 1t was a flock of eagles midsky
with iron beak against another flock of
eagles iron-beaked. 1t was thunder
bolt against thunderbolt. 1t was arch
of wrath against archangel of
1t was Hancock against Long
1t was Fitzpatrick against Wade
1t was SIocum against Hill.
was o. o. Howard against Hood
was Sherman against Stonewall
Jackson. 1t was Grant against
Lee. And the men who were under
them were Just as gallant, and some of
them are here, and / detain the two
garlands that / have twisted for the de-
and in recognition OF honesty
and prowess put the coronals upon these
federals and confederates.
North and south, we will make a great
fuss about them when they are dead.
There viii not be room on their tomb
to tell how much we appreciate
them. We shall call out the military
and explode three volleys over their
graves, making all the cemetery ring
under our command of ''Fire!" We viii