New Britain herald., 1917-06-05
REBELS NO LONGER.

t. G Three years ago on the field where was fought the battle of Gettysburg
 there took place the reunion of the Blue and Gray. Today ill Washing
 ton city there encamps sthe survivors of the Confederacy. invited within the shadow of the nations capitol by the veterans of the North,-the Grand Afr1y of the Republic.
 This is the writing of history. Even more. To the mind of Colonel Henry Watterson, the gifted editor of the Louisville Cqurier-Journal, it is the final chapter of those glori- ous deeds that were born at Lexington, Bunker Hill and York town ,and which continued across the Plains of Palo Alto, Beuna Vista and Cerro Gordo, and thence onward to Shiloh, Gettysburg and Appomattox. This thin gray line of Johnny Rebs, capturing the capitol city of the nation unopposed, and carrying beneath the Stars and Stripes the tattered banners of the ,confederacy.-symbols both and alike of national unity and American manhood. as Marse Henry puts fl, must be an inspiring sight to those fortunate to see 1t, and lesson of what this nation is to all who read of it.
 Readers of the Herald will recall seeing on the editorial page Memo rial Day . beautiful poem entitled ''The Bivouac of the Dead,'. by Theo- dore o'Hara. The lines, "On fame's eternal camping ground, Their silent tents are spread
 And Glory guards with solemn round The bivouac of the dead =
 are classic. They are to be seen in every national cemetery, on the gate way, on the central monument, or along the roadside on bronze tablets. Few knew they were written by a Confederate soldier Theodore o'IIara They were written long be- fore the war of states to commemo- rate the Kentucky soldiers fallen in the Mexican war whose remains were brought home year or so later for reinterment in the Kentucky state cemetery at Frankfort. The circum- stance that Theodore O'Hara. the author of .'The Bivouac of the Dead" served the Confederacy as he had served the Union points a moral. and. to the mind of Colonel Watterson. ''adorns tale of patriotic valor out lasting political passion and sur mounting lines of battle"
 Recalling the fitting reminder which is passed among ourselves,- the reunion of Confederate Soldiers at Washington,-and rejoicing that
 such an exhibit Is given to the world,
 the famous Southern editor says -It took three foreign wars and one war of sections-misca1led a civil
 war-to make for us a nation and to
 weld our divided states into a federal unit. Yet more homogeneous people occupying such an extent of territory never existed anywhere on earth. Puritan Massachusetts hnd Cavalier virginia-rather loosely named-came from England. But they did not bring their English quar- rels with tllem.' The terms Puritan
 and Cavalier were afterthoughts, one I might even say affectations, of our war l of sections. That fine bellwether of secession. James Henry Hammond, of South Carolina. sprang directly from
 the Puritang of New England, while
 that first of Confederate soldiers
 Albert Sidney Johnston-a Cavalier
 if ever there was Cavalier-l1ad not
 a drop of Southern blood in his veins,
 having been born in Kentucky soon
 after his father and mother arrived
 there from Connecticut. What rare old Puritan John slidell, the Louis l iana leader was-born and reared in l New York!--and who shall say that Kearney, Custer and McPherson were not Cavaliers?'
 Indeed, Colonel Watterson might have extended the list indefinitely.
 He cites the fact that the one typical isPuritan soldier of the war of sec
 Hons served not the Union but the defacy,-stonewall Jackson. ! Surely 1t was war of sections,.-
 even war of brothers. But for the
 untimely death of Lincoln the ce-
 menting together of the two sections
 -North and South. might and
 probably would. have taken place
 sooner. The South w1s really anxious
 to besin anew--evsn to accept the
 inv1tatfoo of Hnc6in. ssto coma bac,a