The enterprise. [volume] (Wellington, Ohio) 188?-1899, 1891-06-03
what a pity that ne should have been

by that wholesale massacre hundreds of
thousands Of young people at the north
and the south have never had any
chance? We who are fathers stand be-
tween our children and the world. We
fight their battles, we plan for their
welfare, we achieve their livelihood, we
give them the advice of our superior
years. Among the richest blessings Of
my life l thank God that my father lived
to fight my battles until was old
enough to fight for myself. Have you
realized the fact that our civil war
pitched out upon the farm fields Of the
north and the plantations of the south
a multitude that no man can number,
children without fatherly help and pro
lection? Under all the advantages
which we had of fatherly guidance,
what struggle life has been to the
most Of us! But what of the children,
two and five and ten years of age, who
stood at their mothers lap with great,
round, wondering eyes, hearing her read
of those who perished in the battle Of
the Wilderness, their father gone down
amid the dead host? Come, young men
and women who by such disaster have
had to make your own way in life, and
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
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
aim ost 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, 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 at
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 southward to allow the remark
that they who fought in that conflict
were honest on both Sides The chap
lains 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 to-
ward 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, forsalting father and
mother and wife and child, many Of
them never to 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 cot
ton and sugar cane. Men do not sacri-
fee their all for fun. Men do not eat
mouldy bread or go without bread at
all for fun. Men do not sleep unshel-
tered in equinoctial storm 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 instance Of depravity.
As chaplain of Pennsylvania regi-
ment and as a representative of the
United States Christian commission, |
was for while at the front and in those
hospitals at Hagerstown and Williams
burg and up and down the Potomac,
where all the chur ches and farmhouses
were filed with wounded ard dying
federals and confederates, j forgot amid
the horrors to ask on which side they
fought, when with what little aid
could take tn EN- for their suffering
bodies and the mighter aid could pray
for their souls, / passed the days and
months amid scenes that in my memory
seem like ghasily dream, rather than
q possible reality. When n New Or
leans 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 passage, my peace give unto
you, not as-the world giveth give unto
| you" IL read just as though It had been
a northern New Testament. And when
| sat down and took from South Care
linian dying in barn at Boonesville
his last message to his wife and mother
and child, 1t sounded just like message
that 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 frag-
ment Of letter which have some
where yet, for the name and address
we're torn Oft. saw II was the words
| Of wife TO her husband, telling him
how the little child prayed for their
father every night that he might not be
hurt In the battle, and might como
home sound and come home we'll, but
that II anything happened TO them they
might all meet again In the world
where there are no partings, IL read
Just as northern wife would write TO
I 0 husband away from home and In peril
conveying the messages Of little chill
dren. 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 for the suf-
fering they endured have coronal OF
some kind2
! Yea, there was courage on both sides.
I They who were at the front knew that.