Orleans County monitor. [volume] (Barton, Vt.) 1872-1953, 1901-06-03

creek. CGQdT MOuuUdlu,
burg, charlottesville, Chickamauga,
Red River. You have hallowed your
names at Pea Ridge, Donelson, Shilo,
Vicksburg, Lookout Mountain, Allan
ia, Gettysburg, Cedar Greek, Peters
burg, Richmond. All these and a hun
dred more make your names grandly
historic The children of our country
shall visit these places and be blessed
in their remembrance of the dead to
whom they owe their country. We
have had during our long, dark strug-
gle Abrahamic craftsmanship, unsO-
phisticated, honest, real. We have
facts, adventures, characters in store
to feed hundreds of years of fiction.
upon US; he has beheld the blood of
presidents upon our doorposts, and
made them the signs Of his passover.
We have written it down for all time
that the most terrible, God defying
crime of this world is unnecessary
rebellion. Ought not the widows of
these dead to be widows of the repub
lie? How can we honor them more
than to care for and love those our
dead have cared for and loved? Let
their children be in the future the
children of the republic. You will
have to give soon to the sons and
daughters the honor of keeping green
your memory. Let us sanctify the
names of the dead. Don't let down
the merit or repute of the fallen by
fippant recollections of their faults or
vices. They have earned an immuni
ty from such a criticism. Perhaps
some natures go down under evils be-
cause the storm they were made for
has not begun to blow.
How can towns, villages, or cities do
themselves greater credit than when
they set up imperishable monuments
inscribed with the names of the fallen.
1 suggest that our beautiful churches,
our school buildings, though they may
not afford mural tablets of rich design
yet place a roster Of our noble depart
ed incased in fitting framework in
their large rooms Of assembly that
worship and learning may be quick
ened by the memory of our towns
mems heroic deeds and on these an
niversary days let these tributes be
draped for a fitting period that our
children coming here may learn first
of all that our mother gave her best
to die for them. speak of this be-
cause I am troubled with a certain
feeling of absurdity in the awarding
of our honors. Troubled that they
cannot be graded by the scale of JUS
tice. Multitudes of the bravest are
nameless, for we do not know who
they are or how they fell. [ would
not diminish the glory of great COM
manders but they must have men to
inspire who dared to be men. How
many who were privates, now per-
haps in nameless graves, have faced
more perils, pitched themselves into
more cannons mouths and more bay
netting columns than all the major
generals of the army. How many
time has the command been "Put the
Vermont brigade ahead and close up
the ranks" Here were regiments
that were never known to falter; they
were pushed into the assault again
and again; they could be relied upon
as bearing off their dead each time
until they were reduced to a mere
handful. They were often heading an
Of
knew to be senseless. This [ call SOL
diership. Make note of thousands
shut up in the foul pens of captivity,
without officers, decimated every day
by starvation, yet voting to man
that they would never yield their
allegiance. Who can do justice to
these private heroes of war? We
have sworn to see that there is no
vestige of state sovereignty left, for
they died to make supreme and per-
petual the sovereignty of the nation.
Not one of them would have died for
a government optional or unstable.
Something is due for their sakes to
law and justice. We owe it to them
that our government which is friend
ly, free and righteous, shall protect
all alike, high, low, rich, poor, white,
black. And the thing we ought to do
f we remember the obligations we are |
under to our dead is to see that every
vestige of slavery is swept clean. The
war did not begin to extirpate slavery,
it took hold of slavery on its way.
More than hundred thousand freed
men we took to fight our common
battle. Remember the massacre at |
Fort Pillow, the fatal assault at Wag-