Los Angeles herald. [microfilm reel] (Los Angeles [Calif.]) 1900-1911, 1909-05-30


his Observation-Disclosures, Southerner,
each doing his part. There was no Ma
son and Dixon's line on San Juan Hill
Neither was there any color line there,
for none charged more boldly than those
stalwart swarthy fellows of Kent's two
regiments of negro regulars, some of
them the sons of men who had been
slaves.
"Ah, yes" I unused, war has taken
heavy toll of the best and the bravest.
b~4 it has not been in vain. In their men
of the second generation the North and
the South have sealed their compact of
blood brotherhood forever"
III.
M EMORIAL DAY dawned bright and
cloudless. As in a thousand other
cities and towns throughout the
land, the national colors fluttered from
myr1ads of STATS. Up the street. lined
with its cordons of younger patriots
came the pitiful remnant of the Grand
Army of the Republic, its tramp each
year more hating than the year before.
its shattered rank and file thinning. ever
shrinking under the whitening touch of
time.
Forty-four years since Appomattoxl
And these wrinkled veterans. most of
them fast shifting into the age of "the
lean and sllppered pantaloon," but step
ping out bravely withal to the blithe old
marching strains of war days, are the
residue of Shermans 'bummers," the men
who left the scared trail of their ven
geance across the backbone of the Con
federacy from Atlanta to the sea: the
survivors of the other host who followed
Grant through the Wilderness slaughter.
The men of those two armies alone. at
the close of the war, were two whole
DAYS passing a given point when they
! dipped their ragged colors in salute during
the grand review in Washington
when the Confederate forces under Lee
lad down their arms at Appomattox the
Iederal army mustered a million and n
quarter of men under arms-a number
greater than any recorded in history since
the invasion of Greece by the Persian
hosts of Xerxes When the Grand Army
! of the Republic, which was organized a
year later. was in its prime its muster
rolls counted nearly half a million veteran
dwindled TO 225. 157.
Forty thousand of its roster have died
IN the last six years; IL .242 in the year
l9Ui. and greater number in 1905 A
few more years and taps will have
sounded for the last of the BOYS in Blue.
At the head of a group of four, patheti-
/ cally meagre in numbers, but representing
the entire able-bodied remnant of his once
/ tiourlshing post. tramped the veteran of
the first generation who had talked war
history on the evening before with his
grandson. BY right of seniority the old
man was proudly carrying the sword of
command. crippled comrade trudged
beside him, bearing aloft the precious
shot torn colors. A few paltry hundreds
xrvnr a I'll 70 ~
greatest militant volunteer organization
of the last century.
They had had their day. these gallant
old men, gnarled and rheumatic. vet un-
daunted. But before and behind them. a
worthy escort. marched the faultless pla-
toons of the regular infantry. the rum
bling caissons of the field artillery. the
jaunty bluejackets of the indomitable
new navy. recruited from every State of
the Union. and then those younger. khaki
clad veterans of the Spanish-American
War.
One other group there was. perhaps the
most notable of all. These too were lame
and stopped with age. like their fellows of
the Grand Army. but they wore gray
coats strangely like the ''butternut' of
those "Johnnies" who had followed
"Stonewall'' Jackson and Lee in the
Army of Northern Virginia.
| These were delegation of Confederate
veterans. and they We're fraternizing right
merrily with those old fellows with whom
they had clinched so often a generation
ago, in the death grapples of the sixties.
The band ahead of them played Dixie"
! All along the line of march the warmest
plaudits of the crowd of holiday makers
were theirs.
| 1 watched them later as they mingled
with their blue coated comrades in the
cemetery, when the flowers and the little
flags were placed above the graves of the
fallen. No homage was more real than
theirs. Together the men of the North
and of the South had Joined in loving
tribute to the dead whose devoted cour-
age "eyen unto death" had become the
heritage of all.
Here, l thought, is the very apotheosis
of reunion. To our fathers, the men of the
first generation, it was appointed to de-
termine by the memorable arbitrament OF
the sword issues that menaced the foun-
dation of our national integrity. They
did their work unfinchingly, and out of
the furnace fires of war came the pure
cold of ''liberty and union, now and for
ever. one and inseparable."
To lis OF the second generation was
reserved the task ito bind up the ma
tion's wounds" to heal the rancors of
civil strife and to seal anew IN the best
manhood of North and South the COM
noct of true blood brotherhood-a COM
nact destined to be ratified afresh on
each recurring Memorial Day.
AS for the 'laddie boys" of the third
generation. who shall be bold enough to
Set limits to that national destiny it may
he theirs to reaIize-the destiny of a peo-
ME truly reunited. of nation from whose
fraternity schisms and disunion have
been forever burned out whose sons
mingle their garlands and their tears over
fine graves of their former foes?
Like a benediction came the words of
the chaplain orator of the day:-"Com-
rades. in honoring the memory of all
who did their duty as God gave them
TO see their duty. who gave their lives
for what they held to be sacred prin-
ciple. we do but honor ourselves and
our common country. 1t is ours to rev
erence our soldier dead. whether Of the
North or of the South. To judge them
we may we'll leave to a higher power"
And then he quoted that familiar but
ever beautiful sentiment of Francis M.
Finch. verse the words of which are
carved in stone in the National Cemetery
lat Gettysburg
Under the sod and the dew,
Waiting the judgment day;
Love and tears for the Blue.
Tears and love for the Cray