Eagle River review. [volume] (Eagle River, Wis.) 1890-1927, 1910-02-04
Civil War Stories
A Dead Flag.

| Glory, living flag, and made bitter
attacks upon the Stars and Bars-the
| Confederate emblem-a dead flag, adj
V1sing that it be burned or forever
hidden from view. I am In most hearty
accord with the two men in claiming
| that there is only one national flag
| for the United States, and that Old
Glory. It is a good flag. It is the
t best ever made. It is the flag Of the
best country in all the world, and one
of the happiest thoughts we old fell
lows who had part with Uncle Sans
army in preventing that flag from
trailing in the dust, Is that we were
! born in time and were disposed to of
fer our services to the endangered
country. It was no easy task that fell
to the lot of the boys in blue. The
| Americans in blue met Americans in
gray, who were as brave and sktllful
as themselves, and it is a satlsfac-
ton, in our declining years, to know
that they, too, fought man fashion.
They offered their lives and their serv-
| ices for that for which their flag stood
as readily as our boys offered their
lives and gave their blood for the gov
eminent Of the United States. Their
flag went down in 1865, when the
framework Of their hoped-fOr govern
ment was eternally wrecked. When the
southern Confederacy went to It's grave
the stars and bars were equally dead,
as eternally dead. I may be wrong,
but now that the trouble is over, and
has been ever since 1865, l feel like
wanting that brave old enemy of the
sixties to enjoy life as much as pos
sible during their remaining few years.
Our flag is their flag Our country is
their country and both are as much
theirs as they are ours.
Now, you surely agree with me that
the, Confederacy is dead. There is no
than there is of the suns changing
places with the moon. The stars and
bars was the flag of the Confederacy
that they didn't establish. There is
no real life in a flag that has no coun-
try Is it a menace? Is there any
relic, a keepsake, memory? Can
you blame them for retaining ten
der feeling for the flag under which
they made such sacrifices? Can't you
call to mind an old grandmother who
now and then went to the bureau and
took out an old, faded dress that was
| worn by her grandmother at her we'd
ding, kiss it, wipe away tear and
then put it back for another year?
The old dress is dead. 1t has served
| it's purpose. No one wants to wear
it. No one would wear it. 1t has had
its day. SO with that old, dead flag,
that some of our boys seem to have
such intense hatred for, and some of
whom still fear, as we used to fear 1t
when we saw it waving over the leads
of charging lines. Are their fea,s well
grounded? Surely not. You love our
flag better than you would if you had
not fought for It, Those old men in
gray loved their flag more dearly be-
cause of the battles they had fought
under it. l should deem them little
less than human if tender memories
did not come as they looked upon the
old relic, the dead flag Of a buried
Confederacy; if they did not now and
then bring it forth and show affection
for it, Would you have them forget
their dead?
There was a time when officers in
high positions, and hundreds of thou
sands at the north, thought there was
great danger that the government Of
the United States might lose out in
the contest Let us, for arguments
sake, suppose that we had lost out,
the third or fourth year of the war;
lost out after we had gone through
many great battles whose history will
never die Do you think that If the
country of which our flag is the en-
I blem had gone down we would have
ceased to love that flag, and that it
would not be a source of delight to us
! all our lives, even though 1t were a
dead flag, as dead as the Stars and
Bars?
1t was given me to serve in the
l Spanish-Amer war and the Philip
pine insurrection. l saw tens of thou
sands of the sons and grandsons of the
old Confederate soldiers wearing the
uniform of the American army, serv-
ing under the one flag, clarifying the
one country: men from the south
marching shoulder to shoulder with
tens of thousands of the sons and
erandsons of Union soldiers. I saw
brigades, divisions and corps under
the command. of men who had com
manded in the Confederate army. It
| is possible that these later army expe-
riences, things that l saw and heard
then, may have warped by judgment
and softened my heart SO that I look
with less fear upon the dead flag of
the dead Confederacy than some do
Lieut.. Col ]. A. Watrous in Milwaukee
Wisconsin.
T Stonewan Jackson and the Cadets.