Gettysburg is of itself a monument to human courage, but its field of blood has been made a national cemetery of seventeen acres, which was dedicated with imposing ceremonies on November 19, 1863, at which President Lincoln made the greatest address ever delivered on American soil, “With malice toward none, with charity for all.” A soldiers’ monument was erected in 1868, which is sixty feet high, surmounted by a marble figure of Liberty, and occupies a crown of the hill, where it is a conspicuous object for miles, and arranged in semi-circles about the base are the graves of nearly three thousand of the unidentified victims of the dreadful conflict.
“Thus sleep the braves who sank to rest,
By all their Country’s wishes blest.”
AN OLD COLONIAL HOUSE AT APPOMATTOX, VIRGINIA.—This picturesque old mansion, built while Virginia was still a colony of the mother-country, stands yet as a landmark of an earlier civilization and a social era that has passed away. The wealthy pioneer who planned it took as his model some still older mansion of the merry England from which he had emigrated, and thus sought to transplant in the wilds of America a memorial of some loved spot in his native country. Its halls are now filled with the ghostly recollections of the past, for even the mighty events which took place in this immediate vicinity in April, 1865, seem almost like ancient history, so rapidly does time speed away on the wings of steam and electricity.
FORTRESS MONROE, VIRGINIA.
From Gettysburg our route was southwest to Washington, and thence by way of Fredericksburg to Appomattox. From Washington the Richmond, Fredericksburg and Potomac Railroad runs through a sterile section, unrelieved by either picturesque scenery or smiling field, so that a part of it has long been known as the Wilderness, famous, however, as the scene of many great battles in 1863-4, many traces of which are still to be seen from the car windows of passing trains. Fredericksburg is distinguished also as the vicinity in which Washington was born, and where he spent the greater part of his youth. Here it was also that Washington’s mother lived for a long time, and died in 1789. A monument erected in 1883, in the suburbs of the town, marks the place of her sepulture. Twelve miles beyond Fredericksburg is the battle-ground of Spottsylvania Court House, where Stonewall Jackson received his death wound, May 2, 1863. Indeed, the region for fifty miles thereabout is still scarred by the strokes of contending armies delivered thirty years ago, and cemeteries in which repose the heroic dead of both Union and Confederate are numerous, marked by many monuments to attest the appreciation of the living for the sacrifices which were endured in those dreadful years of the sixties. But if the country is somewhat barren, and gruesome with reminders of fratricidal strife, it is not entirely destitute of the phases that lend cheerfulness to life. Here is essentially the land of happy negroes, where poverty abounds with joy, for absence of responsibility is contentment of mind with the colored race. At the depot there is always a swarm of pickaninnies eager to scramble for pennies thrown to the crowd, and the most comical scenes imaginable occur at these tussles, for the little darkies themselves, in an array of all sizes and shades of black and brown, a company of tatterdemalions that would put Punch and Judy to rout, are ludicrous enough to make a goat laugh. The street-scenes of villages near-by, as well as in the suburbs of Fredericksburg, are equally whimsical, presenting, as they often do, human nature in its most grotesque aspect. Horses are rarely used by negroes for draught purposes; mules more frequently; but bulls, cows and yearling calves are the chief dependence, and carts the popular style of conveyance with these happy-go-lucky people. There is no need for haste, and the loads are never large, hence a yoke of cattle are as handy as a span of horses, and preferable because slow movement allows more sleep on the way. The sun makes the tobacco grow, and the rain makes music on the cabin-roof; so rain or shine the darkey’s heart is always light and the future is hidden from him by a veil of present delight. Such sights teach the value of content, even if they do offend ambition, and in them the philosopher’s stone has its hiding-place.