The Redwood gazette. [volume] (Redwood Falls, Minn.) 1873-1940, 1896-06-04


tie OF Antietam, the battle of Perry
vile, Pittsburg Landing, Pea Ridge,
Fort Pillow and Fredericksburg, in
the year 1862, did not improve the
outlook for the soldiers struggling
for the perpetuation of the Union.
AS President Lincoln continued to
receive news from the front, the fur
rowed lines of his sad and careworn
face increased in depth. But the
North was learning a necessary and
difficult lesson through the slow and
expensive process of experience. In
competent and ornamental officers
were gradually withdrawn from active
service and their places supplied by
brave and competent men who had
proved their fitness for command on
the field of battle. We draw breath
OF relief as we enumerate the great
battles of 1868 Charlottesville, Get
tysburg, Stone River, Chickamauga,
Lookout Mountain, Missionary Ridge
and Vicksburg. The most desperate
campaign of the war opened in 1864.
Grant superintended the operations
in the east, while Sherman had com
mand in the west. Why detail the
grand march of Sherman to the sea,
or enumerate the bloody battles
through which, step by step, Lee was
forced back from the Rappahannock
to Petersburg and Appomattox? The
victories of the Union were prodigous
and unexampled. The voice of eter-
nal justice pronounced the doom of
treason. This is not the place nor
time to apportion the praise or blame
for our victories and our defeats. We
are not here to commemorate the
memories of the war so much as that
of our fallen comrades. When asked
to enumerate the heroes of the war
we are most likely to name prominent
generals. While Grant and Sherman
and Sheridan and Thomas and Han
cock and Meade and Mcpherson and
Logan and Hooker and Sedgwick rem
dered transcendent services at a
great crisis in our history, yet their
sacrifices we're ten-fold less and their
services no more valuable than that
of the private soldier. The soldiers
who conquered the rebellion were cit
izens before they were soldiers. The
Union amy was made up of men who
left home to follow the old flag in Or
derto preserve the Nation, not for the
compensation of thirteen dollars a
month, but for the triumph of those
eternal principles of justice and<lib-
erty. They came from the factory,
the store, the mill, the farm and from
school, endured the hardships
in their struggles in the great battle
of life. Disdaining titles, the trap
ping of rank and distinction, and os-
tentious dress, these men went forth
to engage in the serious business of
war. 1t has been truly said that the
war for the Union involved issues of
greater magnitude and importance
than we're ever before submitted to
the arbitrament of arms. The su-
premacy of law, the honor of our flag,
the constitutional principles of our
government, and the very life of the
republic we're involved. Nearly two
million men served during the war, of
which number nearly four hundred
thousand died during the continuance
of the struggle. Over thirty thousand
died in rebel prisons. A person who
was never prisoner of war cannot
comprehend the terrible significance
of that statement. Many ofthis num-
Der were starved to death. A just
God will cause an accounting to be
made. Happy the fate of the soldiers
who fell in the swamps around Vicks-
burg, in the thickets of the Wilderness,
or in front of Pickett's charge at Get
tysburg, where thousands upon thous-
ands went down in the storm and
agony of war, compared with the
fate of those whose lives went out in
the darkness and delirium of starva-
ton in rebel prisons.
In our National cemeteries are bur-
led over three hundred and forty
eight thousand Union dead. Of these
graves one hundred and forty-eight
thousand are marked unknown" :"
These men builded their own monu-
ments. To the redeemed republic is
I "a Il II