CHAPTER II
THE REAL HEROES
The real heroes of the war have not been decorated yet. They have not even been pensioned, for many of them lie in forgotten graves, and those who do not are not the kind to clamor for honors or emoluments.
On the last Great Day, what a strange awakening for decorations there will be, if such be in store for the just and the brave: Private soldiers, blue and gray, arising from neglected graves with tattered clothes and unmarked brows. Scouts who rode, with stolid faces set, into Death's grim door and died knowing they went out unremembered. Spies, hung like common thieves at the end of a rope—hung, though the bravest of the brave.
Privates, freezing, starving, wounded, dying,—unloved, unsoothed, unpitied—giving their life with a last smile in the joy of martyrdom. Women, North, whose silent tears for husbands who never came back and sons who died of shell and fever, make a tiara around the head of our reunited country. Women, South, glorious Rachels, weeping for children who are not and with brave hearts working amid desolate homes, the star and inspiration of a rebuilded land. Slaves, faithfully guarding and working while their masters went to the front, filling the granaries that the war might go on—faithful to their trust though its success meant their slavery—faithful and true.
O Southland of mine, be gentle, be just to these simple people, for they also were faithful.
Among the heroic things the four years of the American Civil War brought out, the story of Captain Thomas Travis deserves to rank with the greatest of them.