The Redwood gazette. [volume] (Redwood Falls, Minn.) 1873-1940, 1895-05-30

Will D0 Cn0 0HOrC 10 cOnSeCr8t0 Wnat
humanity has execrated, for truth and
the angels with fight through eternity
to thwart the apotheosis of a lie!
On this sacred day we are promised the
unexampled spectacle of dedication in
Chicago of a monument to the Confederate
dead We can respect the tenderness which
mourns personal bereavement, and we
can forgive if we cannot approve the breach
of taste, the gross confusion of principle,
which prompts this seeming desecration.
We may properly wait for a report of the
spirit displayed and sentiments expressed
there before we indulge the feelings of in
dignation which the announcement of the
proposed exhibition has naturally inspired.
The soldiers of the Union can acknowledge
no formal interchange of courtesies that in
wolves any suspicion of our surrender of
principle. The blue and the gray can only
mix with prOpriety, on basis of general
agreement that we were everlastingly right
in the contest, and they were cruelty and
deplorably wrong. When Henry Watterson,
an ex-Confederate says. as he said recently:
1--WE were wrong and we know it now: we
were whipped and we are glad of it, or
when he said at the Lincoln banquet in St.
Paul: II had rather be here tonight, sur
rounded by the surviving veterans of the
Union than be President of the Southern
ConfederaCy, if there was Southern Con-
federaCy, which thank God there is not.''-
he laid the basis for fraternity which
means something, reunion which can be
enduring. The same basis was laid by the
ex-Confederate author of that magnificent
poem High Tide at Gettsburg," when he
wrote:
''They fell who lifted up hand
And bade the sun in heaven stand.
They smote and fell who set the bars
Against the progress of the stars,
And stayed the march of mOtherland.
''They stood, who saw the future come
On through the wars delirium.
They smote and stood who held the hope
Of nations on that slippery slope
Amid the cheers of ChriStendOm.
If this inscription can be placed on the
Confederate monument at Chicago, and if
Henry Watterson shall deliver the Grafton.
there might still be questions as to the selec-
ton of this day for the ceremony, but no
permanent injury will result from it I am
sure. These are sentiments worthy of per-
petuation, and those who utter them are en-
titled to our fraternal respect and regard.
But those who still claim as many do, and
as Jefferson Davis did, with his dying breath,
that their lost cause was a righteous cause,
which was only overthrown temporarily by
brute force and overwhelming numbers,
throw down challenge which the Grand
Army of the Republic wonld be false to it.
self in declining to accept.
We will therefore await the revelations of
to-days unique proceedings at Chicago ccn-
fidently relying on the intelligent discern
ment and answering patriotism of the
American people, which will promptly stamp
the approval or disappoval upon this per-
torrance which its features may deserve.
In all the material development which has
signalized our country above all others on
the face of the earth, during the past thirty
years, the veterans of the Union have per-
formed their full part. They have penetrat-
ed the vast Western plains and peopled
them they have dug mines and worked
them: they have built great cities and made
them prosperous they have founded vast
commonwealth and governed them. They
have evolved moral tone, spirit of ration
al freedom regard for law and reverence
for justice, consent to the Capitalization
of governmental powers in the interest of