Of knightly deeds and dreams.”
I might have talked to you of campaigns and battles, or discussed the causes and results of the war, or spoken of army life in general. But these are harvested fields, in which I did not care to glean after the reapers who had gone before. So it seemed to me that I might interest you, for a few brief moments, by telling this simple story of a few of the martyred dead whose lives and services, although not written in any history, are worthy of record on the brightest pages of fame’s deathless memoirs. The Union army contained a vast host of men such as these I have described. Never in any other land beneath the sun, nor in any other age since the morning stars first sang together, did such an array of brilliant youth and splendid manhood rally around any standard to do battle for any cause. From schools and workshops, from fair country fields and busy marts of commerce, the bravest, brightest, best of all the land came thronging to fields lit by the baleful fires of civil war, to fight, to suffer, and to die for the Republic and for Freedom. The comforts of home, the charms of society, the joys of love, the profits of commerce, the acquisitions of industry, the allurements of ambition, the delights of ease—all these were abandoned for the privations, the hardships, the dangers of a soldier’s life. The world was fair and beautiful to them, the future hopeful and happy. But they gave all they had—the boundless resources of their youth, the potent energies of their manhood, the devotion of their hearts, even life itself—for Union and Liberty. Saint nor martyr never gave more.
“Old Greece hath her Thermopylæ,
Brave Switzerland her Tell,
The Scot his Wallace heart, and we
Heroic souls as well.
The graves of glorious Marathon
Are green above the dead;
And we have royal fields whereon
The trampled grass is red.