XVI. The Duty of the Republic to its Fallen Heroes. "Coelumque aspicit et dulcis moriens reminiscitur Argos."-VIRG. "Such honors Ilion to her hero paid, And peaceful slept the mighty Hector's shade. Steeped in their blood, and in the dust outspread, Nine days neglected, lay exposed the dead."-ILIAD. THE first duty of a Government is to protect the life of the soldier; the second is to give him honorable burial when he has fought his last battle. This duty has been recognized by all nations, and it has been considered imperative. No nation so barbarous as to neglect the ashes of its patriots,-no family so divested of social affection as not to desire to recover the earthly relics of one of their number who died away from home. That mysterious chain which binds the heart of the survivor to the dust of the departed is now binding the hearts of an innumerable company of our people to the graves of our fallen soldiers. To recover the ashes of the loved one is the first thought that occurs; and the uncertainty of the spot where the body is reposing intensifies the grief. Promiscuous burial the human soul abhors. This feeling is natural, and it cannot be repressed. Virgil has beautifully expressed it in the line we have quoted above. With his back to the earth and his eyes on heaven, the dying soldier thinks of his beloved home. It is generally among the very last wishes of those dying among strangers, that they I could die at home. Our fancies will visit the red fields of valor which have been sanctified by the baptism of patriotic blood; they will haunt the halls of our hospitals, filled with the suffering, and steal into the countless chambers of the bereaved, where Rachels are "weeping for their children, and will not be comforted, because they are not." The duties of Governments to their fallen soldiers apply with peculiar force to the soldiers and families of republics. Our grand army of a million men is a fair, full, and honorable representation of the great body of the people. There are whole regiments and brigades where there is not a man who did not leave home and kindred for the war,-kindred who watch with tenderness and apprehension the news of every battle, and whose affection spreads its drooping wings over the camp where the soldier sleeps. How many of our rank and file would not have Christian burial if they died at home, and some plain stone, at least, in memoriam, placed to mark the last couch of the sleeper? How many of our army, fallen already, have not left friends who would part with some treasure to recover the bodies of those they loved, or at least to know the spot of sepulture? Hundreds of instances—yes, thousands-are known of attempts, often fruitless, to find, identify, mark, the spot, or make inquiries about the graves. The Western battle-fields alone have grouped a million stricken hearts around those suddenlycreated sepulchres of the brave. Our officers and soldiers put forth their last heroic exertions, in every skirmish and in every fight, to bring off our dead, or bury them on the field, preserving their identity as far as the horrible exigencies of war will allow. But this was not enough; and the Sanitary Commission early undertook to obtain information by which "the place of burial of the volunteers who have been killed in battle, or who have died in hospitals, may be established. They have also elaborated a system of records for those dying in hospitals, and of indications of their burial-place, by which their bodies may be identified; which has received approval, and been ordered to be carried out, blanks and tablets for the purpose being furnished to each regimental quartermaster." This plan was warmly embraced by Congress and the Soldiers' Relief Associations, and it was in the main adopted, and has been carried out as far as it seemed possible. One thing more was needed. Besides having cemeteries, larger or smaller, wherever our soldiers have fallen, we should have a great national cemetery for soldiers near Washington, where all our brave men who fall in the service in this neighborhood, or who can be brought here, may have honorable graves. Each State could have a space allotted for its own citizens; and this City of the Dead should be embellished by emblems of art and beauty, which exalt and refine civilized life. The cost of this war for one hundred minutes would munificently accomplish this.* Soldiers who die in the camp of General Hooker are given a suitable burial. In all cases the bodies are enclosed in good pine coffins, obtained from the Quartermaster's Department, and the interment is made with the ceremonies due the rank of the deceased. XVII. How to end the War by the Arts of Peace- BACON said that the worst thing in national or international war was the decline of the arts of peace; and by their decline he measured the approaches of nations to barbarism. And yet the student of Bacon very well knows that he was not “a peace man." He indeed regarded peace as the normal condition of society, as health is the normal condition of the human body. But he claimed no exemption for Governments and communities from the law of purgation and blood-letting. He held that when a nation could not come out triumphantly from a war of defence, that nation either had never had any vitality, or she had lost it; and, further, that a nation which could not go successfully through a long, devastating, and merciless civil war to vindicate its constitution, its laws, and all the elements of its nationality, suppressing rebellion against its sovereign power and crushing its enemies under its feet, and then settling back to its wonted repose, stronger than ever, he regarded such a nation's doom as sealed. And all history was with him,-all history has been with him to this day. His own England proved it. In her earlier epochs the Britons had only once proved themselves strong enough to resist the shock of foreign invaders. Rome alone was unable to subdue Britain; and nothing but the untimely death of Cæsar saved that island from becoming a helpless colony of Rome. The Saxons, the Danes, and the Normans all came and conquered, and the race of the Angli gradually faded away. But from the Norman conquest grew up gradually, though surely, a great nationality, which we now call England. That nationality grew up by war, and war only. The arts of peace had little to do with the consolidation of England as she stood in 1815. By war, William of Normandy extended his kingdom through a large part of England. By war his successors conquered and annexed the Principality of Wales. By war, and a war of centuries only, was the Emerald Island brought under the yoke and kept there. By war-unrelenting and unprovoked—was Scotland annexed to the hated crown of the Plantagenets. By one of the most ferocious and bloody civil wars that had then been known was England able to consolidate her own Government, maintain her central authority, and hold even her old rebellious subjects loyal to her throne. She extorted loyalty from all the peoples she conquered; and she did it at the mouth of the cannon and the point of the bayonet. Who ever heard of England settling a rebellion by compromise? The day she did it would have been hung in black from that hour her decline and fall would have dated. She would have parted with the prestige of union, entirety, wholeness, invincibility. And yet England does not hesitate now to advise us to deliberately cut our empire into pieces,-to halve it with rebels,to compound the most stupendous felony of all the ages,-to treat for peace with a lawless band of murderers holding the knife at the throat of a common mother! In giving this advice, her impudence is not even graced with the counsel of the fox who recommended all foxes thereafter to give up the silly fashion of wearing tails. England has not yet lost hers,— although she may hereafter find out that the steel-traps are laid in the dangerous path she seems determined to follow. America take England's advice about this insurrection! Just as soon would we have taken her advice about putting down the Whiskey Rebellion. We prefer to follow her example rather than her counsel,-shoot it down. |