Orleans County monitor. [volume] (Barton, Vt.) 1872-1953, 1902-06-02


many q family has been builded out
of the tombstones of Arlington Heights
and Petersburg, of Nashville and At
lanta. We are better men and women
because our dead soldiers have shown
us how to nobly live and how to glo-
riously die.
Battlefield Request.
The dead of our American battle
fields a.r intensely alive today in the
influence of the sorrowing loved ones
who were left bereft. Sometimes we
are apt to enormously believe that the
only sufferings of war were to be found
in the gunshot wounds and the swamp
fevers, in the heartrending cries of
"Water. Waterv' heard at night from
the wounded lying between the con-
tending lines, in the colds, the heats,
the hunger, the WEAKNESS and the
homesickness suffered by the men at
the front. But 1 have always believed
that the wives and mothers and the
sisters and sweethearts who stayed at
home to weep suffered far more than
the husbands and sons and brothers
who donned their uniforms and went
forth to die. Think Of their sad, weary
nights! Think Of their startled ears
when the rumors were heard that a
great battle was about to be fought!
Think of their wet eyes, scanning the
long newspaper columns of the dead
and missing! That awful word miss
ingw Think Of the poverty which the
young widow had to face, with four
or five children at her back! Today we
honor the dead soldiers who wore the
blue and the gray. We ought also
to honor the wives and mothers, the
sweethearts and the sisters, who were
willing to give those soldiers as sac
rifice, as we'll as the heroes who were
willing to die.
To show what the women at home
had to suffer l want to read what is
perhaps the saddest letter ever penned
by mortal hand. 1t was written by
Abraham Lincoln to q humble woman
who lived in Massachusetts. Many
such letters could have been written
to other women, north and south, who
were called upon to suffer in the same
way and perhaps to make equally great
sacrifices:
Dear Madam-I have been shown in the
files of the war department statement
of the adjutant general of Massachusetts,
that you are the mother of five sons who
have died gloriously upon the field of bat
tie. 1 feel how weak and fruitless must
| be any words of mine which should at
tempt to beguile you from loss so over
| whelming, but cannot refrain from ten
| dering to you the consolation that may be
| found in the thanks of the republic they
died to save. / pray that our Heavenly
| Father may assuage the anguish of your
| bereavement and leave you only the cher
ished memory of the loved and the lost,
| the solemn pride that must be yours to
| have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the
| altar of freedom. Yours very sincerely
and respectfully,
| ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
! But, though the noble women Of the
north and south may have suffered
greatly, yet by their very sufferings
God was able to heal the wounds, the
bleeding wounds, of this nation. The
breaking hearts of the north reached
out toward the breaking hearts of the
south, and they found that in their
troubles they were sisters. Some of
the bereft mothers had sons fighting In
both armies. AS such mother sat in
her family plot between the two graves
between the grave of her boy in blue
and that of her boy in gray-she prayed
that the past civil strife might be for
ever buried. She pleaded with earnest
prayer because her boys who died had
come from the same cradle and had
looked up into the eyes Of the same
mother.
When Bunker monument was being
| dedicated, the crowd was SO great thai
by the pressing and pushing a panic
was threatened. The presiding Officer
tried in vain to still the tumult. TheI
the orator of the day arose, and DAME
Webster's deep voice called out ''Stant
backv' Some of the people cried, sit il
impossible to stand backr' Then Web
ster's flashing eye swept over the mul
titude as he answered: Don't use tina
word impossible in place like this
Nothing is impossible at Bunker HILL
Some pessimists said that the bitter
ness of the civil war would never end
But, as Daniel Webster said in ref
erence to Bunker hill, so nothing wa
impossible in the suffering presence o
broken hearted American womanhooG
Their common griefs and sorrows fol
ever forbade men to revive the horror
of our civil strife
Our COnsecrated Homes.
The dead of our American battle
fields are intensely alive today becaus
they have proved that the strength O
this country is to be found in the multi
tudes of its consecrated homes and ne
in the size of it's standing armies. Whe
. the civil war broke out, there were nc
enrolled upon the muster of the wa
: department more than $4,000 men. Til
5 traveller could go up and down th
= length and breadth of the land withor
2 seeing an American soldier in uniforl
7 except in few forts built for prote,
2 ton against the Indians and in place
!, like Governors island and Fort Sun