τὁν δ εὑρον φρἑνα τερπὁμενον φὁρμιγγι λιγεἱἡ, καλἱ, δαιδαλἑἡ, ἑπἱ δ' ἁργὑρεον ζυγὁν ἡεν. [ton d' heuron phrena terpomenon phormingi ligeiê, kali, daidaleê, epi d' argyreon zygon êen.]—Il. 9, 185-6.
Lesbos was an island consecrated to music from the days of Orpheus, and we can imagine the lovers singing together and Achilles solacing his loneliness by chanting to Patroclus the praises of his lost love.
The valued friend was and is Archer Anderson, of Richmond, Virginia.
"Why is it that wherever one goes in all parts of England one always finds—thoroughly as I believe the institution of slavery is detested in this country—every man sympathizing strongly with the Southerners, and wishing them all success? We do so for this reason ... Englishmen love liberty, and the Southerner is fighting, not only for his life, but for that which is dearer than life, for liberty; he is fighting against one of the most grinding, one of the most galling, one of the most irritating attempts to establish tyrannical government that ever disgraced the history of the World."—G. W. Bentinck, quoted by Chas. Francis Adams, l. c., p. 111.
I have tried in this paper to reproduce the past and its perspective, to show how the men of my time and of my environment looked at the problems that confronted us. It has been a painful and, I fear, a futile task. So far as I have reproduced the perspective for myself it has been a revival of sorrows such as this generation cannot understand; it has recalled the hours when it gave one a passion for death, a shame of life, to read our bulletins. And how could I hope to reproduce that perspective for others, for men who belong to another generation and another region, when so many men who lived the same life and fought on the same side have themselves lost the point of view not only of the beginning of the war, but also of the end of the war, not only of the inexpressible exaltation, but of the unutterable degradation? They have forgotten what a strange world the survivors of the conflict had to face. If the State had been ours still, the foundations of the earth would not have been out of course; but the State was a military district, and the Confederacy had ceased to exist. The generous policy which would have restored the State and made a new union possible, which would have disentwined much of the passionate clinging to the past, was crossed by the death of the only man who could have carried it through, if even he could have carried it through; and years of trouble had to pass before the current of national life ran freely through the Southern States. It was before this circuit was complete that the principal of one of the chief schools of Virginia set up a tablet to the memory of the "old boys" who had perished in the war,—it was a list the length of which few Northern colleges could equal,—and I was asked to furnish a motto. Those who know classic literature at all know that for patriotism and friendship mottoes are not far to seek, but during the war I felt as I had never felt before the meaning of many a classic sentence. The motto came from Ovid, whom many call a frivolous poet; but the frivolous Roman was after all a Roman, and he was young when he wrote the line,—too young not to feel the generous swell of true feeling. It was written of the dead brothers of Briseis:—
Qui bene pro patria cum patriaque iacent.
The sentiment found an echo at the time, deserved an echo at the time. Now it is a sentiment without an echo, and last year a valued personal friend of mine, in an eloquent oration, a noble tribute to the memory of our great captain, a discourse full of the glory of the past, the wisdom of the present, the hope of the future, rebuked the sentiment as idle in its despair. As well rebuke a cry of anguish, a cry of desolation out of the past. For those whose names are recorded on that tablet the line is but too true. For those of us who survive it has ceased to have the import that it once had, for we have learned to work resolutely for the furtherance of all that is good in the wider life that has been opened to us by the issue of the war, without complaining, without repining. That the cause we fought for and our brothers died for was the cause of civil liberty, and not the cause of human slavery, is a thesis which we feel ourselves bound to maintain whenever our motives are challenged or misunderstood, if only for our children's sake. But even that will not long be necessary, for the vindication of our principles will be made manifest in the working out of the problems with which the republic has to grapple. If, however, the effacement of state lines and the complete centralization of the government shall prove to be the wisdom of the future, the poetry of life will still find its home in the old order, and those who loved their State best will live longest in song and legend,—song yet unsung, legend not yet crystallized.