Men of all classes, forsaking home, kindred, and property, rushed to present a living barrier to the impetuous march of the enraged and misguided horde that pressed on with almost resistless fury, and threatened to overwhelm and destroy the noblest fabric of the enlightened mind. At last the carnage of battle has ceased. Nature smiles again, and rapidly obliterates the marks of the ravages left upon her green fields, where the huge and desperate armies have swayed and struggled in deadly conflict. The emblems of civil liberty are again restored, the fasces replaced; and it now becomes the country to arouse itself from the depths of apathy, and revive those sentiments of tenderness and gratitude which nature everywhere bestows upon the memory of those who upheld the cause of liberty, and fell in its defence.
IV.
To understand fully the determined character, the steadfast loyalty, of these brave and unfortunate men, we must consider at length the details of this enclosure, with its hungry, emaciate, filthy mass of humanity, whence arose a stench of death so powerful as to be perceived at the distance of a league—the burning sky, the array of instruments of torture, the manifest design of cruelty.
The suffering wretch had only to pronounce the magic words, “Allegiance to the Rebel cause,” and his sufferings and misery were at an end. The huge gates flew open, and with grim smiles, the enfeebled and tottering apostate was welcomed as an accession to the southern ranks.
But the republic was safe here, and the sacred fire of its altars burned steadily through all the horrors and noxious vapors of this hell on earth.
Strange to relate, that out of the seventeen thousand registered sick, there is record of only about twenty-five who accepted the offers to save their lives, and took the oath of the rebels. Is it not wonderful that this great number of men should thus, in silence, brave the horrors by which they were surrounded, and remain firm in their convictions of right and wrong? An entire army perished, rather than deny the country which gave them birth! They would no more surrender their principles, than their homes and altars, as ransoms for their lives.
Has the world’s history a parallel to this devotion?
“But these are deeds which should not pass away,
And names that must not wither, though the earth
Forgets her empires with a just decay.”
V.
Heroism in the damp and noxious prisons, where the noble qualities of the mind are shaken and swayed by the sufferings of the body, is far different from that which is displayed upon the battle-field, amid the glittering and inspiring pomp of war.