CHAPTER LXXI.
And Gordon? What did he see, standing on Massanutten’s crest?
They lay there, beyond Cedar Creek, the Eighth Corps, the Nineteenth Corps and the Sixth; and, further away, the heavy masses of their cavalry; spread out before him, forty or fifty thousand strong.
Like a map. “I can distinguish the very chevrons of that sergeant,” said he.
And now he bends his eyes on Fisher’s Hill.
Those men lying there were beaten at Winchester, one month ago. Against brigade Early can bring regiment, against division, brigade; can oppose division to corps. And yet he is going to hurl this little handful against that mighty host.
A mere handful; but hearts of English oak! The ancestors of these men fought and won at Crecy and Agincourt; and they are going to fight and lose at Cedar Creek. The result was different,—but the odds and the spirit were the same.
Have I forgotten the brigade of Louisiana creoles? No; but when I would speak of them, a certain indignant sorrow chokes my utterance. They came to us many and they went away few; and the Valley has been made historic by their blood, mingled with ours.
And now is heard the voice of one, speaking as with authority,—the voice of a Louisianian, proclaiming to the world that these Louisianians died in an unjust cause. Unjust! It is a word not to be used lightly. Your share of the obloquy, living comrades, you can bear; but theirs? For they are not here to speak for themselves.
And to say it to their widows and their orphans!
That word could not help the slave. He is free, thank heaven. Nor was the war in which these men died waged to free him. He was freed to wage the war, rather, as everybody knew when the proclamation of emancipation was promulgated. In point of fact, the struggle was between conflicting interpretations of the Constitution; and the Northern people, by a great and successful war, established their view of its obligations; the freedom of the slave being a corollary of victory.
Unjust! had it not been as well to leave that word to others? ’Tis an ill bird that fouls its own nest.
The war wrought wide ruin; but it has been a boon to the South in this, at least: that it has jostled our minds out of their accustomed grooves. Bold thinking has come to be the fashion. And so we should not find fault with the author of Doctor Sevier, if, dazzled by the voluptuous beauty of quadroon and octoroon, he should find a solution of our race troubles in intermarriage. Let him think his little thought. Let him say his little say. It will do no harm. On one question he will find, I think, a “solid” North and a “solid” South. Both are content to choose their wives from among the daughters of that great Aryan race which boasts so many illustrious women; and which boasts still more the millions of gentle mothers and brave wives, whose names the trump of fame has never sounded. And with such, I think, both the blue and the gray are likely to rest content. Content, too, that their children, like themselves, should be of that pure Indo-Germanic stock whence has sprung a Socrates and a Homer; a Cæsar and a Galileo; a Descartes and a Pascal; a Goethe and a Beethoven; a Newton and a Shakespeare. The countrymen of Cervantes and of Cortez, failing to keep their blood pure, have peopled a continent with Greasers and with Gauchos. And shall the children of Washington become a nation of Pullman car porters—and octoroon heroines—be their eyes never so lustrous?
But such matters are legitimate subjects of discussion. So let him have his say. But there are things which it is more seemly to leave unsaid.
When a step-mother is installed in the house, you may think her vastly superior, if you will, with her velvets and her laces and her diamonds, to her that bore you; and you may, perhaps, win fame as an original thinker by saying so to the world; but there is a certain instinct of manhood that would seal the lips of most men. And I, for my part, know many, very many Northern men; and not one of them seems to wish to have me grovel in the dust and cry peccavi. Would it not have been a disgrace to them to have spent, with all their resources and odds, four years in subduing a race of snivellers? No; let us say to the end: you were right in fighting for your country, we equally right in battling for ours. The North will, the North does respect us all the more for it.
As I read these words, Charley rose, and, opening a book-case, took out a volume. Finding, apparently, the passage he sought, he closed the book upon his forefinger.
“When a man takes upon himself,” he began, “to rise up before Israel to confess and make atonement for the sins of the people, be should be quite sure that he has the right to exercise the functions of high-priest.
“If either his father or his mother, for example, sprang from the region roundabout Tyre and Sidon, that should bid him pause. It is not enough that one wields the pen of a ready writer. One must be an Hebrew of the Hebrews. Else the confession goes for naught.
“What Jack has just read,” added he, “brought to my mind a passage which I have not thought of for ages. You must know, Alice, that after the death of Cyrus at the battle of Cunaxa, the Ten Thousand made a truce with Tissaphernes, lieutenant of Artaxerxes, who agreed to conduct them back to Greece. After journeying together for some time, he invited the Greek generals to a conference at his headquarters. Clearchus and almost all of the leading officers accepted the invitation, and at a given signal were seized and murdered.
“The Ten Thousand were in as bad plight as ever an army was. Without leaders, confronted by a countless host, they had either to surrender or cut their way through a thousand miles of hostile territory.
“Xenophon, though not an officer, called an assembly, and soon aroused a stern enthusiasm. Speech after speech was made, and no one uttered other than brave words, except a certain Apollonides; and he cried out that the others spoke nonsense,—that the safe and profitable thing to do was to grovel before the Great King. Xenophon replied in a sarcastic vein, ending as follows:
“‘It seems to me, oh men, that we should not admit this man into any fellowship with us, but that we should cashier him of his captaincy and put baggage upon his back, and use him as a beast of burden. For he is a disgrace to his native land and to all Greece, since, being a Greek, he is such as he is.’
“‘And thereupon, Agasias, the Stymphalian, taking up the discourse, said, ‘But this man is not a Greek; for I see that, like a Lydian, he has both his ears bored.’
“And such was the fact. Him, therefore, they cast out.”