The Bossier banner., 1891-08-06

VIC give UHem Bn6 ADVICE O1 OuI
superior years Among the richest
blessings of my life / thank God that
my father lived to fight my battles un-
til was old enough to fight for my
self. Have you realized the fact that
our civil war pitched out upon the
farm-felds of the north and the planta-
tiOns of the south a multitude that no
man can number, children without
fatherly help and protection? Under
all the advantages which we had of
fatherly guidance, what struggle life
has been to the most of usl But what
Of the children, two, and FIVE, and ten
years of age, who stood at their moth
er's lap with great, round, wonder
ing eyes, hearing her read of
those who perished in the bat
tie of the Wilderness, their
father gone down amid the dead hosts?
Come, young men and women who by
such disaster have had to make your
own way in life, and 1 will 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. Come!
And, if / can not 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
ern tombs, detain the garlands lit
tie while, that 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, | 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.
1t is too much to ask either side to be-
lieve 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 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
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 Pennsylvania regi-
ment and as representative of the
United States Christian commission. |
was for 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 We're filled 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 l could
pray for their souls, passed the DAYS
and months amid scenes that in nv
memory seem like a ghastly 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 1 saw the leaf turned
down at the passage, ''NIy peace I 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 l sat down and took
from South Carolinian, dying in a
barn at Boonesville, 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 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 addr ess 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
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: thew
were honest on both sides. And those
who lived to get home and are living
yet were just as honest, and ought they
1ot for the suffering they endured have
B coronal of some kind?