The Iowa plain dealer. [volume] (New Oregon, Howard County, Iowa) 1867-1895, 1891-06-04

TO impress upon their minds and
hearts that our fallen heroes drew
their swords and shouldered their
muskets in behalf Of the hottest cause
that ever called an army together,
we will pray that the fallen mantles
of our patriot dead may rest upon
them, we will strive to make immor-
tai the patriotic principle, that the
glorious heritage which has come
down to us from the men OF 70 and
by the men Of 81, purged from its
by them to be handed down to the
next generation, and by them to the
next, and SO on for a thousand gen.
erations to come, q Republic great
and grand, baptized in blood, puri-
fed by the fires OF million muskets,
and dedicated to liberty, q beacon
light to the oppressed Of all lands. a
model among the nations Of the
earth.
But the honors do not all belong to
the soldier in the field, there were
true and loyal men in the rear Of the
army who made that army possible,
citizen patriots, who by their cheer
ful encouraging words, and their
generous gifts and loans Of money,
supported their sons and brothers
and Deighbors in the field, and there
were heroines as we'll as heroes in
those days, thousands OF them all
over the North, noble true brave
women, wives, mothers, daughters,
sisters and sweethearts, to the ten
der devotion OF these courageous wo-
men, of the Relief Corps, in q great
degree belonged the success Of the
union; without them this great nation
would to-day have been broken,
crushed into fragments beneath the
heel of traitors. but for them instead
Of a unit, there would have been as l
believe, not only North and a South
but an East and q West, each faction
struggling for existence, as q Repub-
lie, perhaps as a Kingdom, and each
compelled to maintain large stand
ing army supported by taxation at
vast expense, q standing menace to
all the others, and to maintain its
own integrity autonomy and safety;
for i: the south had succeeded, her
success would have been but an
entering wedge which in time would
have split the continent in pieces;
and SO while Europe was unifying,
we would have been dividing. Wo-
mans part in the war will never be
forgotten. England justly boasts
her Florence Nightingale, and France
glories in her Joan of Arc, but Ameri-
ca turns with greateful pride to her
thousands of Florence Nightingal les,
women of noble birth, who cheerfully,
aye enthusiastically, and yet tenderly
and loveingly babe adieu to husbands
sons brothers and lovers who put on
the blue to beat the gray, they sent
them forth with their blessing, many
q matrons heart was wrung with
anguish as she saw in Imagination
her darling boy stretched on a distant
field, with deaths damp gathering on
his brow and heard his dying moan
of home and mother, or wasting
away in some prison pen under the
cruel torture Of fiendish prison keep
er, and yet she said, ''Go my son and
may the blessing of God go with
YOU and thus did hearts bleed at
home, and thus were tenderest ties
severed, thus were partings made be-
tween dearest friends who were des-
tined nevermore to meet ON earth,
''The matron whose sons are lying
In graves on distant shore,
The maiden whose promised husband
Comes back from the war no more.'
Those were trying times but the
women of the north bore themselves
with heroic fOrtitude, and their deeds
of love, of sacrifice, adorns one OF
the brightest pages of our national
history. Perish the day when wo-
mans part in the great struggle shall
be remembered no more.
But comrades, as we think over the
past, the retrospect is not all OF
summers hue. The old army days had
their lights as well as their shades,
their cheerful as well as their serious
aspects, their ludicrous as well as
dramatic features, and l am not sure
that we should not look on that side
as well as on the other, there were
experiences that were common to all.
| to every regiment and every army
corps. there was the "intelligent con-
traband,' and 1.-The well informed
gentleman just from the 'front.' who
knew all about the Generals plans
and could tell you just exactly what
the enemy was going to do. there
were roads that were nine feet deep,
and fellows that howled Mark
Twain" and roads that had mo bot
TOM" There were regiments that in
every little bit ola skirmish solemnly
declared that they were all cut to
pieces. the aniable government mule
and his equally amiable driver was
everywhere to be seen, as important
personages as the general himself,
then there was the selfstyled Union
man of the South, the regular old
Arkansaw bushwhacker, bad luck to
him, he used to say with a whine
that belonged to the bayous, .'You'ns
the same fellow you remember, Tibet
he'd heern tibet the Yanks he'd horns. .
Then there was the "Pisen Cakes
women, and the lady that sold milk.
You remember it all, the marches
marches, and raids over corduroy
roads, and through swamps and
over bayous. The forty rounds, the
three days rations, the joker Of the
company, and the butt of the regi-
ment, whose precious life was nearly
pestered out of him. All these things
We're an important part of every well
regulated and well conducted CAM
paign. Do You think I'll ever forget
that old Mexican War hardtack they
fed us on in 81 at st. 10? that was
before our sagacious Uncle Sam had
gotten his bake ovens built. Don't
remember with admiration the re-
markable ingenuity displayed in the
very economical plans invented for
the management of the Commissary
Department? how. to save transpor-
tation, he combined the animal and
vegetable, in that same old Hard
Tack, | have always had profound
respect for the conquerors of Santa
Anna, and should esteem it an honor
| suppose to eat of the crumbs that
fell from their tables, but when those
crumbs had reached a green old age
and were filled with the liveliest re-