Year: 1875

To the Editor of the Cincinnati Gazette:


At the reunion of the Army of the
Tennessee, held at Des Moines, Septem-
Der 30. MajorGen. Jno. Pope delivered
an address, from which we make some
extracts. In speaking of the relations
between the North and South, Gen. Pope
says:


'Phe days of Cancellation and reconcile
alton have long been upon US, and many
there be who even main tanned that the
time has come when the saint and the
sinner should be alike honored in this
land of ours. 1t may be so. but let US,
comrades, at least be careful that the ar
tificial flowers which we are permitted
rather than invited to scatter over the
remains of those who fell in a cause so
righteously lost, be not suffered to impair
the sweet odor of the more natural flow
ers which we yearly strew over the graves
OF those who lie buried that their coun-
try might live. Let US remember the
solemn legacy those dead men have be-
Queathed to us, consecrated by their
blood and sanctified with their lives, to
maintain among ourselves, and TO trans
NIT to their and our descendants the re-
suits they laid down their lives to
achieve. They would wish, as we do,
that the bitter feelings engendered by
the war should be buried deep beneath
the monuments we erect to their memo
ry; but they could not wish, as we who
reverence their memory should not, that
the results for which they so freely pour
ed out their blood should be entombed
there likewise They would desire, as
we do, that every effort be made to bring
about an honest and wholesome recon
ciliation with those OF our countrymen
who have sinned SO grievously against us
and their country; but they would pro-
test, as We should protest, against the
maudlin sentimentaiity and political
quackery which would confouud right
with wrong; which would teach US to
honor alike the cause which was just and
the cause which was unjust, and which
would reduce US to that condition of
mental and moral idiocy that we shall
reverence the memory of the man who
died in arms to destroy his country,
equally with the memory of the man who
died in arms to defend it.


mo reconciliation based upon such
confusion of the moral sense can ever
bring forth good fruit nor can any peo-
pie or any government dare encourage it
without destroying that lofty sense of
patriotism which is their only safeguard
and under the influence of which so
many thousands of our best and brayest





timely and a cruel death


ITO whatever political party, however,
we may now belong we all know we'll
what we fought for--to maintain consti-
tutional government, and to enforce res
pect for law upon those who warred on
both The distinction between the cause
we maintained and the spirit in which
we maintained it, and the cause of our
adversaries and the purpose with which
they upheld it, is broad and deep no
less, indeed, than the difference between
American constitutional government and
Mexican anarchy.


at is not surprising that the people of
the free States, bred up in reverence for
constitutional government and respect
ior law and order, should have been 10th
to believe, and hard to convince, that
war was upon our threshold on such an
issue. But war did come; and if we fail
now to learn the lessons it taught US, we
shall commit sin against humanity and
a crime against our posterity forever.
So long as any considerable portion OF
our people maintain the fatal heresy that
armed resistance is iustifable when cleo
tions are unsatisfactory, this government
is il danger.


when we forget, or cease to assert
and to insist upon the vital distinction
between our cause ana lAQL OF tue rebels
or the difference in respect due to the
men who fought on our side ana those
who fought on theirs, the days of this
republic will be numbered"


There is something startling in these
words, coming as they do from one whose
profession and whose life remove him
from all influences OF party politics, and
whose utterances, therefore, are free
from that bias which makes it necessary
to regard the suggestions of the partisan
with suspicion, and render it impossible
to compute their JUST weight until it is
known which side he is on.


If our Northern people, under the i'm
pulse of n mistaken magnanimity, or the


influence OF feelings not the less fatal be-
cause they are generous, have so far for
gotten the tragedies OF the past as to be
willing to merge all ideas OF right and
wrong in desire for what is so much
harped on under the popular name OF
reconciliation, it is certainly true that we
have learned no lessons from the war.
What occasion the North has for seek
| ing reconciliation with anybody ha5
never yet been made apparent, We are