News and citizen. [volume] (Morrisville, Vt. ;) 1881-current, 1891-06-04

age, who stood at their mothers lap
with great, round, wondering eyes, hear
ing herread of those who persisted in the
Battle of the Wilderness, their father
gone down amid the dead host2 Come,
Young men and women, who by such
disaster have had to make your own
way in life, and l will put the garland
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. Come! And if
cannot spare a 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
your life which has almost amounted
to carnage, and the white for the vic
tory you have gained.
FLOWERS FOR THE SURVIVORS.
Before | put the two garlands | am
twisting upon the northern and south
ern tombs l detain the garlands little
while that l may put them upon 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 hearty loyalty to the
United States government, and ready
if need be to march shoulder to Shout
der against any foreign foe The
twenty-six winters that have passed
since the war, l think, have sufficient
ly 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 hon
est in their prayers. The faces that
went into battle, whether they marched
toward the Gulf of Mexico or marched
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 70 return, were not in earn
est 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
cotton and sugar cane. Men do not
sacrifice their all for fun. Men do not
eat moldy bread, or go without bread
at ALL for fun. Men do not sleep I'M
sheltered in equinoctial storms for fun.
There were some, no doubt, on both
u fO,, CO1Ifo,.ci
expecting opportunity for violence and
pilIage, 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 instance of depravity.
As chaplain of Pennsylvania regi-
ment and as a representative of the
United States Christian commission l
was for a while at the front, and in
those hospitals at Hagerstown and Will
lamsburg, and up and down the Poto-
mac, where all the churches and farm
houses were filled with wounded and
dying Federal and Confederates, for
got amid the horrors to ask on which
side they fought, when, with what lit
tie aid | could take them for their
suffering bodies and the mightier aid l
could pray for their souls, passed the
days and months amid scenes that in
my memory seem like CHASTITY dream
rather than possible reality.
When New Orleans boy, unable to
answer my question as to where he was
hurt, took out from the folds of the
only garment that had not been torn
off him in the battle New Testament
marked with his own life blood, and
saw the leaf turned down at the pas
My peace | give unto you, not
as the world giveth give L unto you" it
read just as though it had been a north
ern New Testament. And when | sat
down and took from a South Carolinian
dying in barn at Bonneville his last
message to his wife and mother and
child, it sounded just like a message
that a northern man dying far from
home would send to his wife and moth
er and child.
And when L picked up from the bat
tie field of Antietam the fragment of
letter which have somewhere yet, for
the name and the address were torn off,
I saw it was the words of wife to her
husband, telling him how the little child
prayed for their father every night
that he might not get hurt in the bat
tie, 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. thread just as northern wife
would write to 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 kind2
THEY WE'RE BRAVE MEN.
Yea, 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 ''mudsills" and
southern 'braggarts. 1t was an army
of lions against an army of lions. 1t
was a flock of eagles mid-sky with iron
beak against another flock of eagles
iron beaked. 1t was thunderbolt
against thunderbolt. 1t was archangel
of wrath against archangel of wrath.
1t was Hancock against Longstreet. 1t
was Fitzpatrick against Wade Hampton.
1t was Slocum against HILL 1t was o.
D. Howard against Hood. 1t 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 l detain the two garlands that /
have twisted for the departed, and in
recognition of honesty and proves put
the coronals upon these living Federals
and Confederates. North and South,
we will make a great fuss about them
when they are dead
There will not be room on their tomb
stones 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
will have long obituaries in newspapers
telling in what battles they fought,
what sacrifices they endured, what
Tags they captured, in what prisons
hey suffered, but all that will come
100 late. One word in the living ear of
oraiSa for thnir bopactu op5 oo,,ro cra