But yet he stoops to give it. More complete
Is love that lays forgiveness at thy feet,
And pleads with thee to raise it. Only Heaven
Means CROWNED, not HUMBLED, when it says “Forgiven.”
—A. A. Proctor.
Let us reverently pass over that awful calamity of April the fourteenth, which followed so swiftly upon the winged feet of Victory, quenching all her lights of joy and of triumph in darkness and in blood. The Nation’s holy sorrow is too sacred a subject to be treated here.
I take up my story at a point of time some weeks later, when the unnatural and over-strained excitement of alternated joy and grief, triumph and despair, had in some measure subsided, and the amazed and distracted people had in some degree recovered self-possession and calmness; when the victorious legions of the army had passed in grand review before the President and all the high official dignitaries of the Union, before all the resident representatives of foreign courts, and above all, before the multitude of grateful and admiring fellow countrymen, who had gathered in millions to do honor to their patriotism, courage and devotion, and who, as they looked upon those glorious veterans, thought that if every man of the rank and file was not a commissioned officer, nearly every one of them certainly deserved to be so.
Promotions were made for “gallant and meritorious conduct in the service”—that is, so far as there should be room for them. But if every private soldier of the Union could have been advanced according to his deserts, we should have had an army composed almost entirely of major generals. There were thousands upon thousands of men in the ranks, as brave, as true, as skillful, and as devoted, as many who commanded divisions and corps; and if these could not all be promoted it was only because, as I once heard a schoolboy captain demonstrate to his discontented company, “All cannot be corporals.” But if we cannot decorate every brave soldier with a pair of shoulder-straps, we can at least give every one of them our heartfelt honor and esteem. As for us, we never see the dear old faded blue uniform anywhere, but our hearts warm to the wearer, as we think of the marchings and fightings, by day and night, the fastings and vigils, the wounds and illnesses, the exposure to freezing cold and burning heat, and all the inconceivable sufferings incident to war which the soldier must have borne for our sakes.
But this is a digression, and we must get back to our story.
It was a few days from those of the grand review. The armies had been disbanded and sent home. The multitudes of visitors had left the city. And Washington, which had for weeks been suffering under a plethora of population, was relieved.