USA > Iowa > Harrison County > History of Harrison County, Iowa, including a condensed history of the state, the early settlement of the county together with sketches of its pioneers > Part 38
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Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38
This service says that the old soldiery do not forget their com- rades. Fresh in memory are those who were once with us in march and battle. True men do not forget those with whom they stood shoulder to shoulder in the greatest, hardest times this land ever saw. The fellowship of the living, wedded in fire, still endures. Some men look angrily on the great brother- hood of former soldiery which now covers the loyal land. They affect to feel danger from the hundreds of thousands who link their hands under the leadership of the Grand Army of the Republic. But pause and think you-you who frown-are the fellowships of the battlefields, made in love of the flag, sworn to on the altar of death, to fall asunder like blades of grass mown down? Think you that men who rested together on the hard ground, stood in the same line, followed the same flag, charged together when death was in every step; men who were deprived of home, and had no friend but each other, and closed up as the dying fell-do you ask that they shall throw aside these ties of life and death? Can you not instinctively feel that they cannot do it-that they cannot abandon their needy and often friendless comrades and the widows and orphans of the dead-that they cannot dishonor themselves by destroying the sympathies of a glorious cause? Bear with us, we pray you, in this thing. Think not hard of us for our soldierly care of
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comrades. If it be a weakness in us to cherish old memories, yet deal tenderly with us, and grant us this one little boon, for once you needed us, and then nothing was too much to promise us when you asked us to encounter death. We did it. When we ask you to let us keep fresh the ties of death, will you not do it? Be not jealous because we remember each other. Dan- gerous! Yes, once dangerous to the traitor and rebel. But not now. Men who periled life for law may be trusted in peace. Dangerous only to those who are the law breakers. See, only the color guard carry muskets, and the muzzles are filled only with flowers. There is no danger in these flowers, no bullets hid under them. Peacefully, loyally and reverently we lay the flowers on the graves of our dead.
The Grand Army of the Republic is wholly different from all other military organizations. No accessions to its ranks but those who have had service in the Federal cause, and who are possessed of honorable discharge; even the sons of these veterans cannot keep step with their illustrious sires; no recent. con- versions to the Union cause can break bread with them; patriotic service and honorable discharge is the sesame that opens the great door to their temples. They jog along with crippled step, and each year at roll call they find their ranks melting away like the roll call of the "Light Brigade after the charge of Balaklava." When they fall out of the ranks it is to take a rest forever, from which no blare of bugle call, nor roll of drum will ever summon them again. Seventeen thousand were by the Great Captain mustered out during the past year, and 40,000 must respond to the same inexorable order the present year.
We of the Grand Army would not claim, nor would we garner for ourselves, all the glory and laurels won in the late National conflict. Many, very many, acts of bravery, hardship, privation and pure devotion to the cause were daily enacted at the home, which challenge the admiration of all, and outstrip the abandon of the van man in the forlorn hope. See that wife and little ones
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left to her care, while the husband, father and patriot is at the front. The last particle of meal in the measure is exhausted; the last drop of oil in the cruse has been used; the monthly pay of the husband and father has by some means been delayed; not a dime of "fractional currency " in her once well-filled purse; the larder is wholly depleted, and nothing to replenish the same; the children and herself are pinched with hunger and chilled with cold; the desire to provide for children and self drives her forth for food; hunger, want and desperation nerve her sinking self; the pittance grudgingly dealt out by miser hand wounds more the heart than stays the self; with the last expiring effort she reaches home; faint and weary, unattended, she sinks on her own threshold-dies-in a land of plenty-dies of utter want. The noon of her life, the meridian of her ambition, hope and joy -- her very life, is as much a sacrifice as though she sank in the forefront of battle. All honor to the brave and loyal women of our land. It was they who sent to us the well filled letters of such encouragement-these more potent for good than all the medi- cines of the surgeon's chest. It was they who petitioned the Throne of Grace for the protecting care of husband by Him who holds the destiny of nations in His hand-by Him who will not even let the sparrow fall to the ground without His notice. Who but those offering, or they like circumstanced, or even Deity, could measure the intensity and earnestness of that prayer? What has been the consideration for all this suffering-death -- this expenditure of blood and treasure?
To-day we who are in the flesh enjoy the blessings of a Gov- ernment, not only free in form but free in fact; a Government where the vast natural boundaries mark our national lines; a Government where all love and revere the grand, beautiful Stars and Stripes. Beautiful? That flag is always beautiful, whether it be fresh from the hands of loyal, loving women, or bleached by storm, or torn in shreds by whistling bullets and shrieking shells. Beautiful, because it is the emblem of liberty, for which
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sixty millions of free people are ready to fight and, if necessary, die. Beautiful, because our forefathers fought under it and con- quered our independence. Beautiful, because from 1861 to 1865 it was carried from battle field to battle field through the blood- iest war the world ever saw. Beautiful, because more than a quarter of a million of loyal lives were freely given in its defense. Beautiful, because to-day it floats triumphantly over our whole country, loved by every American citizen and respected by the whole world.
Was the cause for which those whose graves we to-day deck with choicest flowers-those who willingly yielded life therefor -a just one? More easy would it be for the child's hand to pluck up Lookout Mountain by its.rocky roots, or dry up the Mississippi with its infantile breath, than for us to change the irreversible verdict of mankind, "THE WAR FOR THE UNION WAS FOREVER RIGHT, AND THE REBELLION WAS FOREVER WRONG." True, he who was the head center of that rebellion, may gather a few lingering lovers of the " lost cause " around him at Mont- gomery, yet they lack crystalization; they perish before the flag; they melt into nothingness before the righteous indignation of an outraged people, like the foreign anarchists at the Chicago Haymarket before the officers of the law.
It was the old Jewish legend that Nimrod, the mighty hunter, took Abraham and cast him into a furnace of fire. But, lo! its flames all turned into roses, and the old patriarch lay down on a bed of flowers. The fierce fires of our affliction have already been turned into flowers of peace and memory and joy and hope. The rain which descends upon the swelling turf above our dead is not the iron rain of death, falling amid the crash of destruc- tion and the thunder of battle, but the rain that brings from the bosom of the earth her fairest floral gifts. The torn hem and jagged fibre of every tattered and smoke-begrimed flag speak the praise of these illustrious dead. Every remembrance of these patriotic dead is an arsenal: every cemetery is a fort. Like the
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chariots of fire and the horses of fire about that ancient moun- tain, are these invisible, but living and resistless, defenders around the mountain of our liberties. The dear form of Lib- erty, with the wounds she may yet have to receive, when asked, " What are these wounds in thine hands?" shall never again among us reply: "These are they with which I was wounded in the house of my friends." Her hands, her heart, may bleed again, but only when she leads a united people, at the command of the God of Freedom, to the immediate and universal emanci- pation of the race.
A word retrospectively and then I've done. The past rises before me like a dream. Again we are in the great struggle for National existence. We hear the sound of preparation, the music of boisterous drums, the silver voice of heroic bugles. We see thousands of assemblages, and hear the appeal of orators. We see the pale cheeks of women and the flushed faces of men, and in those assemblages we see all the dead whose dust we have covered with flowers. We lose sight of them no more. We are with them when they enlist in the great army of freedom. We see them part from those they love. Some are walking for the last time in the quiet woody places with the maid they adore. We hear the whisperings and the sweet vows of eternal love as they lingeringly part forever. Others are bending over cradles, kissing the sleeping babes. Some are receiving the blessings of old men. Some are parting with mothers who hold them and press them to their hearts again and again, and say nothing. Kisses and tears, and tears and kisses-divine commingling of agony and love. And some are talking with wives, and endeav- oring with brave words, spoken in the old tone, to drive away the awful fear. We see them part. We see the wife standing in the door with the babe in her arms, standing in the sunlight, sobbing. At the turn of the lane a hand waves. She answers by holding high in her loving arms the child. He is gone, and forever.
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We see them as they march proudly away under the flaunting flags, keeping time to the grand wild music of war, marching. down the streets of the great cities, through the towns and across the prairies, down to the fields of glory, to do and to die for the eternal right.
We go with them, one and all, by their sides in the gory fields, in all their weary marches. We stand guard with them in the wild storm and under the quiet stars. We are with them in the ravines running with blood, in the furrows of the fields. We are with them between contending hosts, unable to move, wild with thirst, the life ebbing slowly away among the withered pines. We see them pierced by balls and torn with shells, in trenches, by forts, and in the whirlwind of the charge, where men become iron with nerves of steel. We are with them in the prison pens-and here language fails me. We are at home when the news comes that they are dead. We see the silvered head of the old man bowed down with his last and greatest grief.
The past rises before me and we see four millions of human beings governed by the lash; we see them bound hand and foot; we hear the crack of whips; we see the hounds tracking women and men through the swamps; we see the babes sold from the breasts of mothers. Cruelty unspeakable. Outrage infinite.
The past rises before me. We hear the roar and shriek of the bursting shell. The broken fetters fall. These heroes die. We look: instead of slaves, we see men, women and children. The wand of progress touches the auction block, the slave pen, the whipping post, and we see homes, and firesides, and schools, and books; and where all was want, crime, cruelty and fear, we see the faces of the free.
These heroes are dead. They died for us. They died for liberty. They are at rest. They sleep in the land they made free, under the flag they rendered stainless, under the solemn pines, by the sad hemlock, the weeping willows and embracing
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vines. They sleep beneath the shadows of the clouds, careless alike of sunshine or storm, each in the windowless palace of rest. Earth may run red with other wars-they are at rest. In the midst of battle, in the roar of conflict, they found the serenity of death.
Soldier, rest; thy warfare o'er; Sleep the sleep that knows no breaking, Dream of battlefields no more. Days of danger, nights of waking. In our isle's enchanted hall, Hands unseen thy couch are strewing,
Fairy strains of music fall Every sense in slumber dewing.
Soldier, rest; thy warfare o'er; Dream of fighting fields no more. Sleep the sleep that knows no breaking,
Morn of toil, nor night of waking.
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