USA > Ohio > Adams County > In memoriam, a tribute of respect to the memory of the deceased soldiers of Adams County, Ohio : an address > Part 1
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IN MEMORIAM TRIBUTE OF RESPECT TO THE MEMORY OF THE DECEASED SOLDIERS OF ADAMS COUNTY, OHIO EVANS
Gc 973. 74 0h3e 1638655
REYNOLDS HISTORICAL GENEALOGY COLLECTION
ALLEN COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY 3 1833 01084 3644
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Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2012
http://archive.org/details/inmemoriamtribut00evan
IN MEMORIAM. 1
A TRIBUTE OF RESPECT
TO THE MEMORY
OF THE
DECEASED SOLDIERS OF ADAMS COUNTY. OHIO.
AN ADDRESS BY CAPTAIN N. W. EVANS.
Delivered at the Methodist Episcopal Church, West Union, Ohio, September 2nd, 1865.
(BEPUBLISHED)
PORTSMOUTH. O. PORTSMOUTH TRIBUNE PRINT. NO. PO GALLAST.
1902.
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PUBLISHED BY REQUEST AND RESPECTFULLY INSCRIBED TO THE RETURNED SOLDIERS OF ADAMS COUNTY. OHIO.
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The Romans, in speaking of the demise of their friends never permitted it to be said, "oberunt," or "perierunt," "they are dead." "they have perished ;" but they whisper sol- emily to each other : "WVon sunt, " "they are not ;" thus in two words declaring their belief in the immortality of the soul and a future existence. They said : "Our friends exist no longer here." implying, more strongly than an express declaration. that they did exist elsewhere and under other condition .. A sa- credness and dignity invest the character and life when once the angel of death has set his seat on them. Let us respect that sacredness and dignity as much as the ancient pagans did. Let it not be said of our fallen heroes, "they have died," "they have perished." but let us whisper reverentially, "They are not."
Our unreturning heroes are not dead ! They have not per- ished, become annihilated. They live as truly and as veritably today as that instant before the angel of the sepulchre claimed them as his own.
"There are no dead ! The stars go down To rise upon some fairer shore, And bright in Heaven's jeweled crown They shine forever more. And ever near us, though unseen, The dear immortal spirits tread. For all the boundless universe Is life. There are no dead."
They live in our memories, and they dwell in the elysium of heroes. Our brothers fell in the vigor of manhood. To us. they will ever flourish in immortal vigor. They will never pass through the different phases of mortality, grow old, and lapse to the grave by reason of the decay of their faculties, but will ever remain to us as they fell-noble, manly souls-immortal men.
Those men, dead and living, who fought so gallantly at Shi- loh, Perryville, Stone river. Chickamauga. Atlanta, Nashville and
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on other fields, east as well as west, let us consider character -. Let us view impartially what they did, and then let the inter- ences follow of themselves. A word introductory. We have to consider only their acts. We have nothing to do with their motives. We have no authority, either human or divine, to challenge the motives that caused any man to enter the army. We have neither the right, nor the ability to tear away the veil before the penetralia of the immortal spirit, and to disclose its mysterious workings. That is the province of its author. He alone is judge of the hidden springs of human action. Motives belong only to Him. Actions, res factae, things past and done are onrs to interpret, to judge, to approve or condemn. To such we contine ourselves.
Many of our heroes were young men. They were inspired with noble hopes. lofty desires, and grand ambitions. The Canaan of the new world was their heritage. Time was theirs in which to achieve, in which to accomplish. All things were before them. The paths of glory opened on every side. The dazzling crowns of honors, dignities, and riches waited to be claimed. In the luminous vistas of the future they saw their aspirations realized. Youth stole into the studio of Time. seized the pencil of Fancy, and on the virgin canvas of the future, depicted scenes not unworthy of its ardent and impetu- ous genius. Here the young man had attained the acine of his hopes. Lovely women were smiling on him and crowning him with wreaths of immortelles. His fellow citizens stood around. proud to honor him. There he was in gladsome home. A charming ideal, a womanly divinity, radiant with the approving glances of affection, was by his side. Little cherubs clustered about his knees. The sky was the purest cerulean; the air was odorous with rich perfume and intoxicating with delight : the birds warbled divinely, and the sunlight itself was elixir. He had stolen the joys of paradise and brought them back to earth. But hark! the booming of cannon waked the dreamer
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from his reverie. It was the cannon of Smater. Destin; rushed in. and, with the bruch of Prophesy. obliterated the fair scenes in the fire and smoke of battle. There. in the deep solitude of a southern forest. under the weeping cypress. she painted a neglected tumulus, a nameless grave. Oh. the cruel mockery of ambition! the bitter draught of fate! But our youthful heroes were not appalled. The blood of revolutionary fathers coursed in their veins. They saw the storm approaching. and bared their bosoms to meet it. The crisis demanded sac- ritices. They plneked from their hearts each fond hope. each cherished ambition. It was not enough. They tore those bleeding heart- from their breasts, and laid them warm and reeking on the altar of country. They bestowed one last lin- gering thought on those bright vision- of beauty and of glory that had so lately spread out before them and invited then: on. and turned away and died: died without a tear: a murmur, or a regret. What for? To give us and our descendants a united. a happy. an illustrous country. They left no progeney to per- potuate their glorious names and more glorious deeds. The Republic shall be their child! She shall embalm their memory and their heroism and hand them down to her latest hour. The walls of Thebes sprang up to the sound of the lyre of Amphion. When our country shall chant the funeral dirge of her fallen sons. walls shall spring up about her which the tyrants of the combined world shall not be able to breach.
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Other- fell in the meridian of manhood. Their hopes in life. had. in some measure. been realized. They had pleasant homes. cheerful tire-ides, loving wives, affectionate children. They were endeared to community by all that makes life agreeable and happy. Their country called them. They sundered the -ilken cords of affection: they staked human interests, social ties and life itself. on the single throw of a die-and lost ; lost for themselves, but won for posterity. They left their home- and sought and found a soldier's sepulchre in a hostile land.
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Those homes are now desolate: their light has been extinguished : Those wives are draped in mourning: those children are in tear -. The agony of despair has seized the bereaved ones; their bright world has been turned to a bleak and gloomy waste. Henceforth they will pass solemnly and monrofully among u -. The human sont has its tendrils as well as the vine. It will cling to the nearest and noblest thing it can make its own. Let the ook be riven by the thunder blast : the vine will fall to the ground ; its life will thenceforth be imperfect, dwarfed. stunted. It shrinks from observation, and withers away. The express may be hung at almost every door. While we honor the fallen. let us uncover ourselves in the presence of the mourners.
Others were hoary-headed sires, aged and reverend father .. The sun of their lives had arisen in peace : it set in blood. They had lived for their country ; there remamed but for them to die : they died for it. They had seen and known the compatriots of Washington. LaFayette. Adams. Hamilton, Jefferson. They had caught the inspiration of these men. The divine aflatu- had descended on them. 'Their lives had been one long te -- timonial in favor of their fatherland. That testimonial was almost complete. It lacked but the seal. They sealed it with their blood, and "they are not." Let us believe their pure spirits rest in the bosom of God. O, blessed souls of our white- haired martyrs, look down from your thrones in bliss, and let your unction descend on your unworthy children !
These young, middle aged. and hoary martyrs for liberty faced death for us. They placed their bodies, a living barrier, be- tween us and the bullets and bayonets of a cruel foe. What is death? We can readily comprehend its physical phenomena, but what is that terrible. solemn mystery which appals human- ity : from which the boldest involuntarily shrinks?
"Dying is nothing ; 'tis this we fear,
To be we know not what, we know not where."
Death is the door which opens into another world-a worid
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which the strongest ray of human light has not yet been able to penetrate. No Columbuscan discover it to us. God holds the impenetrable curtain. When he lifts it we shall see. Not before. Tell me not that the grave does not suggest horrors in- stinctively. What mean the thousands of medicines, nostrum -. and panaceas, for preserving and for continuing life? Why are the doors and blinds on our watercrafts hung on open hinges? What mean the life preserver? Why did Ponce de Leon seek the fountain of youth? Why is every medicinal spring in the country crowded with healthseekers? Why do you shudder at that "dry, slight cough?" Why do you scan the heavens, examine the grounds. gauge the atmosphere, before going abroad? Ah! that trifling cold, the in-idious harbinger of pulmonary consumption! Why do you involuntarily tremble in the presence of that livid face, those glassy eyes, those pale lips? You perceive your own fate written in unmistakable characters in those melancholy features. You recognize the mark of death. You know that seal is yours also.
The consciousness that we are inevitably to grapple. singly and hopelessly, with the "king of terrors:" that. without pilot. compass. or even friendly star. we must embark ou a pathless. shoreless ocean, from whose bosom no traveler has ever returned. from over whose waters no "angel whispers" have ever told u- aught of the fate of former voyagers: that we must meet an unknown God, face to face, and account for the "deeds done in the body :" the solemn and awful thought that we must stand revealed in the presence of the Sovereign who guides the uni- verse, who is, "a consuming fre," who holds the lightning in His hands, who controls the devastating hurricane. the raging ocean. the heaving earthquake. the burning mountain, in whose power we are "like clay in the hand- of the potter." and by the single breath of whose nostrils we might be annihilated-this is the "sting of death :" this is the invisible spectre which is ever following. chasing. and pursuing us. and from which we are
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ever fleeing, but never escaping. Our heroes met and submitted to this terrible affair of death for us. They said : "It is neces- sary for us to do our duty ; it is not necessary that we should live." They not only met death for us; they not only endured it camly, stoically. heroically ; but they sought it, they courted it, they caressed it, they toyed with it, they despised its pang- and mocked its terrors. They did not ask its "tender mercies." They sought it in all its forms; withering. scorching. blighting diseases; the horrible mangling of cannon balls, the excruciating laceration of grape, the speedy death of the bullet, putrefaction of wounds. thirst on the battle field, starvation in prison, famine and pestilence. This is for country. Men of former times have attained such heights of heroism. They could not have attained higher. The Athenian patriot needed but to display his shat- tered arm to electrify all Attica; the deeds of these men need but to be mentioned to set the country in one conflagration of patriotism.
We might institute comparisons : we might cite examples of ancient heroes and patriots; we might draw parallels between our heroes and those of former times. We could do nothing more. We could not show anything in excess. on the part of former generations. If there be any difference it is in our favor.
The Dutch republicans, the English roundheads, the French revolutionists, fought by the aid of a light that "shone through a glass darkly." The day of liberty was but dawning for them. Light had not yet dispelled the dark clonds of fanaticism. big- otry, hatred. and intolerance. They caught the gleams of reason but occasionally. but fitfully. They fought in the dark. The natural instinct for liberty implanted in the human soul was their guide, their prompter. Our heroes fought in the light of at full blaze of a meridian sun. Their patriotism was not hatred, bigotry. funticism: it was reason, conscience. They saw the end from the beginning; they had calculated the cost ; they admitted no doubtful issue.
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In the spring of 1863 there was a full in the content. The champions of truth and error paused for breath. 'The army had met the shock of the enemy. had received it. but had not re- pelled it. They had not faltered or wavered: they had held their ground. Some of the people of the North began to be-i- Hate, to doubt. to waver. The Medusa of disaffection reared her horrid head, covered with shaky tresses: the timid bogart to be petrified : it was an hour of despondoney. of darkness and gloone
Then Company D. Twenty-fourth Ohio. - pake forth from the Sloot. It seemed the voice of men about to die. Their tous partook of that fearful solemnity and terrible earnestness of those who speak from the portals of the tomb. It wa-
"Resolved. That though we deeply regret the existence of the stern necessity that called us from the fond pursuits and happy as; sociations of civil life, we will not exchange the military for the civil until we have conquered a peace, and the stars and stripes are permitted to float from the dome of every capitol in the South."
This resolution was sublime. Every man of the company subscribed it. It was one of many. The example will serve for the whole army. DRYDEN. OGLE. GUTHRIDGE. ADAMSON' TOLLE, THOMPSON. THOMAS, SHULTZ. CRAWFORD and POINTER died that this resolution might be accomplished. Thi- saure spirit animated these men when they enlisted : it sustained and sup- ported them in the hour of battle: it was the terrible death dealing energy of their powder: it was the force of their bullets. the power of their bayonets: it made the death of those that died glorious, the lives of those that lived sublime.
Adams county honor- all her soldier sons. When they tri- umphed she felt a thrill of joy ; when they fell she experienced a pang of grief. But she felt a peculiar interest in Company D, They were her offering of first fruits. her earliest sacrifice for country. The echoes of Sumter had not died away till that com. pany was in thefield. They were our first ebullition of patrioti-m. Their dead were the first-born of liberty. They were the van- gaurd of Adanis county's little army of heroes. Honor them! Honor the whole army! Their laurels will never fade, They
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will ever remain perfect green. unfaded as if newly plucked, fresh as if wet with the morning dew. Their deeds, acts of immortality, can not die. The fields where they fought and fell will be the theme of song and story.
If there be an elysium for heroes. MeFenEx is there! Ellas is there! SUMMERS, CLARK, DRYDEN, THOMAS, BAILEY. POTTER. PUNTENNEY. PARRISH, SHULTZ, CRAWFORD and their comrades in arms are there! They wear crowns of victory. Arm-in-arm they walk there in glory. When the spirits of these men went up. the angels folded their wings and dropped their harp- to listen to their story. Farewell. shades of departed heroes! Rest in the isles of the happy! Farewell. fallen brothers! When "life's titful fever shall be o'er." there, in that celestial country. we shall meet you once more.
And the survivors? What of them? They have returned. bronzed by the fierce heat and fire of many battle. They have brought their honorable credentials-their sears-many of them disabled for life. They constitute the glorious church of heroes. They have received the baptism of blood on a score of battle fields. They have returned to us from the jaws of destruction. from the "mouth of hell." They danced at the high carnival of Death : they sat at his banquet; they drank his health and dashed their goblets in his face. They have fought the demon? of darkness. and the deadly arrows have hurtled harmlessiy from their armor. They have entered the "valley of the shadow of death." plucked the "olive branch of peace." and brought it back to us. They have earned the gratitude of unborn millions ; They have crowned themselves with eternal honors. Since they have passed through the ordeal of fre. and blood. and leaden death. privation and pestilence. they seem to belong to a higher order of beings. Since their return from the Sinais of the Re- public, where the Lord of hosts spake great truths amid the thunders of battle. their faces seem to shine with a sacred light. We would do well to heed their teaching -.
There are some wearing the guise of men. who. throughout
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the course of the war. watched the bleeding agonies of their country with indifference and contempt. Since the return of the soldiers. the Imman jackals have attempted to defame and villify their characters. We have not words of indignation strong enough for such men. Paris Spinello, the great Thecar painter. once painted Encifer in -o hideous a manner that the contemplation of the picture rendered bim a maniac. If the character of these harpies of mankind could be depicted in all its revolting features. indignation and wrath would make u- insane. Such men would have plucked the spear- from the Roman soldiers that they might have pierced the body of our crucified Lord. They would crase the epitaphe on the monu- ments of our fallen heroes, and would write their own bla -- pheny thereon. They would unearth those sacred ashe- and scatter them to the four winds. They would dance in baccha- nalian orgie- on the grave of Liberty. They would shame the prince of devils, usurp his throne, and drive bim to hide his blushes in the deepest and darkost hell in the universe.
Soldiers! Comrades in arms! Repose on your hard carved laurels. Enjoy the peace you have won so nobly. Your friends are legion. Time is a great arbiter. It will do you justice. These calumnies will die. Another generation will not repeat them. You will be loved and revered when these calumniator- shall have lled drankards' and felons' graves. When you shall have become grey haired and venerable fathers and shall walk with tottering limbs on the brink of life. the children. and young men and maidens will cluster around you to listen to your wonderful story. Alt men will honor you .. They will rise up before you. As you pass along the street they will point you out and say : "That man was at Store river." "Thi- man
fought at Gettysburg " "He was at Mission Ridge." "He was with Sherman." "He was a soldier for the U'nun." And when von shall have been gathered to your fathers in posee. full of years and of honor -. the son of God shall unite with the son of men in -inging your requinte.
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