"I am mortally wounded, but thank God I am dying in a good cause."
From that hour Lanham said he saw there were two sides to the question. He years afterwards told the same story from the floor of the House.
Incidents like this, but more than all Lincoln's address at Gettysburg, led the soldiers of both armies to the conclusion that all were fighting for the same end, which made it easier for the Appomattox surrender and the greatest fraternal reconciliation of which the world has history.
I have said that nine-tenths of the native Americans who afterwards became soldiers in the war had no part or interest in the crimination and recrimination that brought it about and only took part after the die was cast and war was on, and as this is even at this day a broad statement, it may not be immodest in me to relate some of my exceptional opportunities for forming this and other opinions stated in this address.
I was born in the border State of Indiana, partially educated at West Point, a citizen of another border State, Texas, for four years prior to the war. There I studied law under Colonel Waddell, a former member of Congress from Kentucky, then a district judge, and had charge of his plantation with thirty slaves while he was on his circuit court, and as a surveyor and engineer became fairly well acquainted with its people, who I know were satisfied and contented with the Union as it was. But when the die was cast and war was practically on I went to Washington, asked and was given a commission in the regular army, and had a sword made with this sentiment inscribed thereon:
"No abolition, no secession, no compromise, no reconstruction, the Union as it was from Maine to Texas—Anson Mills, 1st Lieutenant, 18th U. S. Infantry, May 14, 1861."
This sword I carried throughout the war and have it still in my possession.
I served in the field with my regiment for the full term of the war without sickness or on leave, and participated in all its battles, serving with the regular brigade, First Division, Fourteenth Army Corps, Army of the Cumberland.
To illustrate how easy it sometimes is for a small number of political agitators and fanatical reformers in any community or nation to compromise the whole to a policy farthest from the thoughts of nine out of ten, I will take my own State, Texas; the methods there used being more familiar to me, but in all other States that claimed to secede similar methods to circumvent the comparatively dormant wishes of the great majority were employed.
These fanatics and demagogues knew that Governor Houston would not call the Legislature in behalf of secession, and even if he did that the Legislature would not pass such an act, so they resorted to that cure-all now so popular with present-day fanatical reformers, the "initiative, referendum and recall."