ELLIS SPEAR,
Companion Brevet Brigadier-General, U. S. Volunteers.
READ AT THE STATED MEETING OF MAY 7, 1913.
PUBLICATION DIRECTED BY THE LITERARY COMMITTEE UNDER AUTHORITY
OF ORDER OF THE COMMANDERY.
The Hoe Cake of Appomattox.
In considering the unity of that great brotherhood of men who composed the armies of the United States in the war for sustaining the government, and perpetuating the form of it made by the founders, we have been giving attention to every phase of the many common conditions which formed our common experience and bound us so firmly together, excepting those of a social and physical character. The great and firm basis of this lifelong comradeship is, of course, the common devotion and the common sacrifice in the service of the country on the existence of which, latent in peace but manifest in war, the very existence of every government is founded. This common devotion to the service of humanity is in the political and social world what the attraction of cohesion and the attraction of gravitation are in the physical world. We shared alike in that sacrifice and devotion and were fortunate in that we were born and reached an age when that struggle came on which allowed us to have a share in that great action, an epoch in history. We do not envy those born since, although we shall die sooner.
But I think you may properly also consider subordinate conditions of a physical character as not unworthy of mention and not without effect in the comradeship which binds us together. We wore common uniform, and in those four years the fashions did not change. Each fellow looked like every other fellow. The resemblance went even so far as that quality of personal appearance which depends upon the use of soap and water, not always abundant in those years. We lived for the greater part in the same home, the spacious, well ventilated, scantily furnished and unroofed out-of-doors. We all had the same kind of bringing up and education in which “Right face,” “Left face,” and “As you were” were familiar precepts not to be disobeyed without reproof or punishment. We were all boys when we went into this school, some of such a tender age that we should now hesitate to place them in command of a suffragette platoon. We were all boys in the same class and at the same school. We slept in the same bed, the lap of mother earth, and dined at the same table, also usually the lap of mother earth. There was a stern and commendable impartiality also in the distribution of the fare. Luxuries were unknown, excepting when, through scarcity, necessities became a luxury, but we shared alike in abundance and want. We could say with slight paraphrase, like the three brothers in the song:
We three brothers be
In one good cause;