The Vermont watchman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1883-1911, 1899-05-31
Civil Wars.
Bigelow Paine.

Commonplace and hackneyed are
comments on the horrors of war. No
man denies that, in the pungent phrase
of General Sherman, "War is hell"
But the conditions that might exist, if,
because of the hellshness of war, man
never withstood his oppressor, or men
never took up arms to defend their
country or maintain their rights, con-
stitute the strongest justification of an
appeal to the God of Battles when all
other means have been exhausted.
An argument is not needed to-day to
defend or justify the war for the pre-
servation of the Union. Lincoln's
prophetic words at Gettysburg have
been fulfilled. The dead-a mighty
host-on that historic battlefield of the
civil war, or from the Massachusetts,
men who fell in the streets of Balti.
more on that twice eventful 10Th of
April to the last victim of titanic fra
tracidal strife in the campaigns that
were ended at Appomattox-these null
tiplied hosts of dead did not die in vain.
Out of grim hell of war rose the
bright heaven of reunited country,
with all its infinite possibilities. In
the hell of one war the hell of endless
bloody strifes was merged, and fu-
ture, glorious beyond the glory of the
rapt gaze of the inspired prophets of
destiny, is unrolling.
The full fruition of the hopes of pat
riots, the disappointment and utter
discontinue of the prophets of evil, are
appearing in this memorial season, on
what the poet has happily styled " The
New Memorial Day." The events of a
year of war with foreign foe have
justified faith and fulfilled prediction.
The President has declared in south
ern city, and the fraternal sentiment
was ratified by the wild yell that rose
over Shiloh and hundreds of other bat
tlefelds, that the care of Confederate
graves henceforth is the sacred duty of
a redeemed and reunited nation. There
is nothing perfunctory in the twining
of the rose and the lily.
The white rose and the red in Eng
land are no longer symbols of inter-
necine strife. They awaken now no
feeling of unbrotherly and deadly dis
cord. They mark simply warning
episode in the transition of a people
from the gristle to the bone and muscle
OF mighty empire. After Bosworth
field, the union of Richmond and Eliza
beth twined the white rose with the |
red, and "heaven smiled upon the fair
conjunction" Richmond's prayer has
been heard:
"And let their heirs, God, If thy will be sol,
Enrich the time to come with smooth faced peace,
With smiling plenty, and fair prosperous daysp'
So shall it be-so has it benin
America. The blue and the gray,
once the badges Of brothers madly en-
gagged in each others slaughter, are
twined in peace, and, louder than when
Webster's thunder taught the lesson in
the Senate, proclaim the truth that "In
union there is strength"
This truth is worthy of all accep-
lance, and yesterday it found utter
ance wherever Grand Army post
met to freshen up the memory of the
events of generation ago, and to deck
the graves of those who wrote it Sin
glittering lines of steel" 1t is no more
matter of sentiment or of rhetoric; it
is concrete fact, evolved from the
civil wars Of Anglo.Saxons, in America
as well as in the abode of their nativ-
ity. These people have proved its
truth and power as applied to individ-
ual nations; they are entering upon it's
application to wider area, and in the
next generation will make it clear what
power for good lies in international
union. The heirs of the red rose and
the white, OF the blue and the gray,
united, will begin to enrich the rest of
mankind "with smiling plenty, and fair :
days."