The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1891-06-01

along these twenty years. Comel 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 victory you have
gained.
Before put the two garlands am twist
ing upon the northern and southern tombs i,
detain the garlands little while that
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 in peace and in hearty loyalty to
the United States government and ready If
need be to march shoulder to shoulder
against any foreign foe. The twenty-six
winters that have passed since the war,
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 10 to
battle, whether they marched toward the
Gulf of Mexico or marched toward the
North star, were 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
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 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 unsheltered in equinoctial storms for
fun. There were some, no doubt, on both
sides who enlisted for soldiers pay or ex-
pecting opportunity for violence and pil-
lage, 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 regiment
and as representative of the United States
Christian commission, was for while at
the front and in those hospitals at Hagers-
town and Williamsburg and up and down
she 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 could
take them for their suffering bodies and the
mightier aid could pray for their souls, /
passed the days and months amid scenes
that in my memory may seem like a CHASTITY
dream rather than posi- BILE reality. When a
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 a New Testament
marked with his own hfe-blood and 1 saw
the leaf turned down at the passage, "My
peace unto you, not as the world giveth
give l unto you" it read just as though it
had been a northern New Testament. And
when / sat down and took from South
Carolinian dying in a barn at Bonneville
his last message to his wife and mother and
child it sounded just like message that 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 letter,
which l have somewhere yet,
for the name and the address were
torn off, l saw it 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 bat
tie and might come home sound and come
home well, but that if anything happened
to them that they might all meet again in
the world where there are no paintings, it
read just as a northern wife would write to
husband away from home and in peril
conveying the messages Of little children.
o, 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, sfor the suffering they
endured. have a coronal of some kinds
Yea, there was courage on both sides.
They who were at the front know that
When the war opened the south called the
called the southern men "braggarts" and
''pompous nothings," but after few battles
nothing more was said about northern
''mudsllis" and southern "braggarts." 1t
was an army of lions against an army of
lions. 1t was flock of eagles mid-sky
with iron beak against another flock of
eagles iron-beaked. IL was thunderbolt
against thunderbolt. 1t was arch
angel of wrath against archangel
of wrath. It was Hancock
against Longstreet 1t was Fitzpatrick
against Wade Hampton. 1t was Slocum
against Hill. 1t was o. o. Howard against
Hood. 1t was Sherman against Stonewall
jackson. 1t was Grant against Lee. And
the men who were under them we're just as
gallant, and some of them are here and
detain the two garlands that have twisted
for the departed, and in recognition OF hon
esty and proves put the coronals upon
these living federals and confederates.
North and south, we will make great fuss
about them when they are dead. There
viii not be room on their tombstcnes to tell
how much we appreciate them. We shall
call out the military and explode
three volleys over their graves
making oil the cemetery ring under
our command of Fire" We will have
long obituary in newspapers telling in what
battles they fought, what sacrifices they en-
dured, what flags they captured, in what
prisons they suffered, but all that will come
too late. Ore word in the living ear of
praise for their honesty and courage will be
worth to them more than military funeral
two miles long or pile of flowers half
mile high and ten bands of music playing
over the grave Star Spangled Banner" or
Way Down South in Dixie" Now while
they are in their declining years
and their right knee refuses
to work because OF the rheu-
matism they got sleeping on the wet ground
on the banks of the Chickamauga, or their
digestive organs are off on furlough be-
cause of the six months of prison life, in
which their rations we're big slices of moth
ing, and their ears have never been alert
since the cannonade in which they heard so
much they have been able to hear but little
since, in these cases l call upon the people
of the north and south to substitute a little
ante-mortem praise for the good deal Of
post-mortem eulogium. These two gar
lands that 1 twisted for northern and south
ern graves shall not be put upon the grass
of the tomb until they have first encircled
the foreheads of tie living l will let the
front of the wreath come down over the
scar OF scalp wound made by the sword
of cavalryman at Atlanta, and droop a
little over the eye that lost its
lustre in the mine explosion at
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