Birmingham state herald., 1895-12-01
ON TO KENNESAW.
The Difference Between 1864 and 1895 as
 Seen by Veterans.

The Difference Between IS64 ana 1S9o as
 Seen by Veterans.
 Henry Watterson in the Louisville Cour-
 ier-Journal.
 The route to Atlanta via Dalton and Resaca, and Calhoun and Cartersville and Big Shanty and Allatoona and Ken nesaw, has a significance for certain graybeards, who, though they may not be able to keep the water out of their eyes in 1885, were not wont to do much weeping during the spring and summer of 1864.
 Whether he wore the one uniform or the other. it would do world of good to every one of these if he could make the journey over again, as I have made it, not through rifle-pitS and over re- doubts, inch by inch. so to say. but in an observation car pausing moment near the pivotal points to look over the brow of Dalton hills and recall the bril- liant fight at Rocky Face, where the Or phan brigade. with MT. Chief Justice Lewis (even then "old Joe Lewis') at it's head did such gallant work at Rosa ca; to peer out through Snake Creek Gap and to recall how McPherson and Logan swept through, while sherman flanked round those carly May days; to mark where Corse "held the fort" at A1latoo- na to see again the spot where the great LeonidaS Polk gave up his life; almost to hear again the guns at Kennesaw; in short to comprehend-after thirty years the full import of that daredevil march to the sea, the valor of each side actually glorifying the valor of the other side, and so on to the Walls-the earthen walls-of Atlanta itself, where, for six weeks, we had a picnic the like of which no man would care to repeat.
 It was sight to see, this same Atlanta, that evening of the 31st of August, 1864, when Hardee having fought the battle of Jonesboro to make diversion, those of us inside marched out and away down the McDonough road. It was sight to Seei One conglomerate mass of smol- dering ruins, the lines of the streets ob- liberated; on every side the smoke and debris of burning homes; the decorated shrine: the very household flowers torn from the lintel. I drove along Peachtree street the other afternoon-a street that in opulence and beauty is fast over taking Third avenue in Louisville and Euclid avenue in Cleveland-and of all the ancient landmarks, but one remain ed; 1t was a mansion in those days; by some miracle it escaped the siege; now, a little dingy brick house, crouchng be- tween and beneath two vast structures, sad and silent, like some poor wan wo- man in fading black who has seen better days, as in truth this has; simple yet a royal homestead whose doorwayS blazed with hospitable light and warmth, and whose roof-tree sheltered the nobest anu 1nOSl Deduillul Ol WOIneH, lOIS SlHce gone to her rest! It is well that Atlanta has left these things far away in the past. Perhaps it is not i'll that so many of those who could live only in the past have vanished from the scene, and that the intervening years, leveling the graves and effacing the scars, have plowed their ruthless highways unconsciously to those who went down beneath the drums. and trampings of that dread time. The dead past has cen buried it's dead. The living must cen live and let live; and it is not for those whose lives are behind them to lay any crosses upon those whose lives are before them, or to dispute the will of God.
 No direr test could have been applied to a people than four years of war and thirty years of peace have applied to the southern people; no people ever endured such an ordeal: no people who ever ex- isted could ever have survived it. Be- hold the proof right here in Atlanta, al- belt proof is everywhere, and in these att testations of enlightened, conservative manhood and womanhood behold the safeguards of the future: for here, here will be found the stuff to meet and beat agrarian encroachments. to drive back alike the legions of usurpation and the hordes of anarchy, and to defend and maintain orderly government laid in democratic principles on republican lines.