Class 
 Book. 
 
 
 GopigkM 
 
 COPYRIGHT SEPOSm 
 
THE VETERAN 
 
 AND 
 
 HIS PIPE 
 
 CHICAGO AND NEW YORK : 
 BELFORD, CLARKE & CO 
 
 1886. 
 
L^ 
 
 Copyright, 
 Wm. Penn Nixon, . 
 
 1885. '^'^■^--v/ 
 All i-ights reserved. />' 1^^ 
 
 Donohue & Henneberry, Printers and Binders, Chicago. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 Comrade: 
 
 If you have succeeded in forgetting the impulse that 
 made yon, for a time at least, a hero, and regarding your 
 wounds as "•23oor dumb mouths" that testify of personal 
 peril, rather than the immortal cause in which they were 
 won, you can hardly feel surprise that the veteran is 
 remembered chiefly as a pensioner ; heroism regarded only 
 as a claim to public charity, and '^the soldier vote''' con- 
 sidered a political commodity, to be purchased with the 
 promise of public plunder. 
 
 The Author. 
 
 April 14, 1886. 
 
INDEX OF TITLES. 
 
 A Double Annlv^ersaey 19 
 
 " Fkeedom and the Right" 21 
 
 High Water Mark , , 32 
 
 " The President Visits Gettysburg " 45 
 
 Our May Days 58 
 
 " Memorial " (?) Day 70 
 
 ' ' Alas, Sweet Charity " 82 
 
 Puritan or Cavalier 95 
 
 " Peace in the Clover-Scented Am " 108 
 
 " The Day We Celebrate ! " 122 
 
 The Harmony op Disagreement 137 
 
 " The Hurt Is in the Heart " 150 
 
 Types and Landmarks 162 
 
 " With Drum-Beat and Heart-Beat " 172 
 
 The PtEFLECTED Light of Fame 188 
 
 The Mount of Transfiguration 202 
 
 Hymns of the Ages .• , 212 
 
 Songs of Two Pp:oples 224 
 
 The Climax of Devotion 234 
 
 Joined or Parted? . . . 248 
 
 Autumn Reveries 261 
 
THE YETERAI AND HIS PIPE. 
 
 A DOUBLE ANOTYEESAEY. 
 
 Apkil 14, 1861 — The Sureender of Fort Sumter — 
 April 14, 1865 — The Assassination of Abraham 
 Lincoln. 
 
 IT is a strangely eventful day. Blower, — the anniver- 
 sary of death and life. Many, perhaps the great 
 majority of those who think to note its recurrence, 
 count it perchance the saddest of all those land-marks 
 by which our national growth is marked, or individual 
 achievement commemorated. But we will celebrate it. 
 Blower, as a feast of thanksgiving and a festival of 
 rejoicing. Twenty-four years ago to-day the nation 
 awoke to the new life of its most glorious epoch. The 
 blow had fallen on the evening of the previous day. 
 At midnight tolling bells began its proclamation to a 
 wondering people. With the dawning came fuller 
 knowledge of the thing we feared. The echoes of the 
 guns of Moultrie were yet sounding the knell of peace 
 over our broad land. The sunshine of the sabbath 
 morning looked down on strangely contrasted scenes. 
 The South was hoarse with exultant shouting. The 
 emblems of rejoicing floated there from every hilltop. 
 
 7 
 
8 THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 
 
 The cannon's sulphurous breath and the bonfire's 
 smoldering embers told of the night's wild jubilee of 
 exultation. The church bells pealed out joyfully. The 
 matin hymns were songs of victory. Miriam's exult- 
 ant chant echoed from thousands of lips that smiled 
 with the joy of accomplished success and anticipated 
 triumph. Thanksgiving was the theme of every pulpit. 
 The light of conquest was in every eye, the joy of vic- 
 tory in every heart. 
 
 Where the nation's power was still supreme, and her 
 glory esteemed above section and self, the scene was 
 widely different. How well we remember it to-day, 
 Blower. The chill, gray sunshine looked on clouded 
 brows ! Eyes were dull with weeping, or red with sul- 
 len rage ! Men wore grave faces and were strangely 
 silent ! Women's cheeks were pallid, and they wept 
 stealthily ! The sabbath bells sounded full of solemn 
 foreboding as they called a stricken people to the house 
 of prayer. The sanctuaries overflowed with worship- 
 ers ! The nation bowed before its God, and prayed 
 that the blood-red cup might pass its lips, or grace be 
 given to bear its woe! The Merciful heard and 
 answered! The nation drank of the red wine of 
 slaughter; but a richer, stronger life than she had 
 ever known before swept through her veins ! 
 
 Twenty years ago to-day another scene in the great 
 tragedy of our national life was enacted. On that day 
 the stroke was given which transformed an exultant 
 nation into a weeping, grief-stricken people. The 
 grandest life which has yet sprung from the loins of the 
 Western world in the very hour of triumph entered. 
 
THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. \) 
 
 through the gate of treacherous violence, into the haven 
 of immortality. The banners of victory flaunted gaily 
 over thousands of happy homes when the sun went 
 down. Smiling lips told joyful tidings by the firelit 
 hearth. Fair cheeks flushed red with welcoming roses 
 for the home-coming brave. Even they that mourned 
 the dead forgot their sorrow in the universal joy. The 
 morrow's noon saw the flaunting banners bound and 
 draped, the fair cheeks paler than the snow, and the 
 mourners' woe enhanced a thousandfold. 
 
 Ahr! well do I pmember. Blower, how I pressed 
 the empty sleeve against the aching heart, while your 
 polished amber tip slid from my quivering lips, as I 
 bowed my head upon the rough pine desk to which a 
 veteran's duty bound me still, and wept when the 
 morning brought us knowledge of the night's bereave- 
 ment. I remember thrusting your gleaming bowl 
 within its silken case and pushing it aside regardless of 
 its soothing fragrance. I remember still the trace of 
 tear-drops on the azure cuff which marked the humble 
 service I was permitted to discharge. How often had 
 I looked with pride on that gold-bordered bit of velvet 
 which told of danger manfully incurred, and duty 
 faithfully performed. Until that hour the veteran's 
 pride had swallowed up all other thought. Our coun- 
 try's glory had blinded me to all wea^<:er sentiments. 
 The roar of battle had seemed to me the Nation's regal 
 challenge to a wondering world and waiting future, 
 published by the cannon's brazen lips. Laden as it 
 might be with terror, it always brought a thrill of rap- 
 ture to my heart, because I heard in its echoes the 
 
10 THE VETERAN AKD HIS PIPE. 
 
 angry defiance of a free people to oppression, or the 
 triumph of conscience over wrong. 
 
 Even the poor brave comrades who had shared peril 
 and privation with ns, whose bones lay bleaching on so 
 many battle-scarred hillsides, had hardly been mourned. 
 To have died for such a cause seemed more of a privi- 
 lege than a hardship. They were rather to be envied 
 than deplored, because of the beneficent glory that 
 enshrined their memories. It seemed but natural for a 
 soldier to die, and an infinite honor to die for a cause 
 so holy. They had not fought for themselves, their 
 own exaltation, nor even for their own homes or fire- 
 sides. Their devotion was not tainted by the flavor of 
 self. They died for the rights of man, for the per- 
 petuity of a government founded on liberty, in deadly 
 conflict with a republic based on the principle of 
 slavery. These were foolish notions, as we now can 
 well perceive ; but in those days I never doubted the 
 Moslemic dogma that "the gates of heaven swing 
 easily before brave souls coming up from the battle- 
 field." So the thought of conflict brought only a stern, 
 strange joy. When we heard that thousands fell, we 
 only thought how each death magnified our victory or 
 added strength to our determination to avenge defeat. 
 Strange as it may seem, I had hardly mourned the 
 missing limb, which molders back to dust beneath the 
 shadow of the springing pines. We were young then. 
 Blower, and life was sweet as vernal sunshine to the 
 springing early buds. The thought of death was all the 
 more irksome because of life's delightsomeness. To be 
 maimed, I knew was to be branded through the years 
 
THE VETERAN AND HIS PirE. 11 
 
 that were to come as one in power less than his fellows 
 — bearing in life the visible sign-manual of death. To- 
 day I almost blush to OAvn that I was then proud of 
 the folded sleeve, because I had given the limb that 
 filled it for the cause of human freedom. I did not 
 once think of fame, nor of comparing myself with my 
 fellows, whether the same had proved themselves 
 meritorious or undeserving. I only thought that I had 
 given up my blood to swell the rich tide that had been 
 poured out to quicken the tree of liberty's second 
 growth. Even the promotion that followed hard upon 
 my hurt and bore date upon the day it happened, 
 seemed a trivial thing compared with the high privilege 
 I had enjoyed. 
 
 In that day, when clods were lifted to the plane of 
 heroes, and knightly souls were fired to marvelous 
 achievment — in all those years of conflict — there had 
 been one, whose devotion every true heart felt had far 
 eclipsed all others, whose tender, serious, self-forgetful 
 spirit brooded regretfully, yet encouragingly, over every 
 battle-field. Our ^' Father Abraham " had become to 
 every heart a presence real and benign, which repre- 
 sented all that was noblest and most glorious in the 
 struggle in which we were engaged. Strange as it may 
 seem to the hard, material present, the sad, plain fea- 
 tures of the Liberator were glorified to our eyes, so 
 that we only saw benignity, devotion and a wisdom 
 passing that of earth, in their calm austerity. He was 
 to us the very impersonation of the spirit in which we 
 fought, "Malice toward none and charity for all." 
 Under its inspiration we bore " the banner of the free" 
 
12 THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 
 
 from victory to victory, counting no hardships too 
 great, and no perils too woeful, while we followed 
 where it led. To us the homely features represented 
 a new era, which we fondly hoped would dawn when 
 all the evils of the past had been swept away, and 
 peace should bring her shining harvest of prosperity. 
 To us he was the forerunner of an era of unmatched 
 blissfulness — a millennium which should cover the con- 
 tinent and send the reflection of its glory across the 
 seas. We did not light to triumph or to slay. The 
 tender heart that led us on would have grieved, we 
 fondly thought, had any impulse so low and base nerved 
 our arms and steeled our hearts for conflict. He was 
 the glorified incarnation of a beatific future. We 
 kneAV he had forgotten himself in his devotion to a 
 principle, of which the day in which he lived was but 
 the seed time of the harvest which some distant morrow 
 was to bring. His life had become so intermingled 
 with the nation's future, in our thought, that we hardly 
 counted him as mortal. We longed to see the load of 
 care uplifted from his brow, and note the glint of jo- 
 cund sunshine in his eye once more. He was our " Old 
 Abe," calm and true and faithful. The touch of earth- 
 iness was never in the picture which our loving fancy 
 drew of him. We never once thought of him as having 
 any personal interest in the events that were happening 
 beneath his ken. It was only as the guardian angel of 
 his country's honor and the future's hope that he over- 
 looked the vast arena and smiled sadly but hopefully 
 when blood sank into the thirsty sand. 
 
 No vulgar sentiment debased him in our fancjr. 
 
THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 18 
 
 If we laughed at scurrilous jests, which made .the tour 
 of the camps under his name, it was with no thought 
 that the ascription of paternity was true ; but with a 
 real gladness in the thought that the overburdened 
 heart did sometimes find even a momentary relief from 
 care in mirthful fancies. He was to us a tender leader, 
 who, while he bore his own great burden uncomplain- 
 ingly, found time to lighten ours, by pointing us to the 
 future, ever bright to his eyes with the fruition of a 
 divine hope. He was our Lincoln — the fruit of a mar- 
 velous past, and the precursor of a future to be shaped 
 and moulded by his aspirations — greater than the 
 greatest, humbler than the lowliest ! 
 
 So when death came to him in the hour of 
 final triumph, it seemed that all other deaths had 
 been in vain. The little we had done was naught. 
 The heroism of our fallen comrades was but wasted 
 manhood. With his last breath it seemed that the 
 future's hope had departed. The free, proud, happy 
 land which we had pictured resting peacefully be- 
 neath his placid smile, while the loitering years 
 went by and death unwilling brought at length the 
 crown of immortality — this dream, which had filled so 
 many millions of strong hearts, was blotted out for- 
 ever. In his grave it seemed were buried all the 
 brightness of the future. Those who were left, how- 
 ever good and great they might be, seemed but base 
 and mean in comparison with him^our immortal mar- 
 tyr. The sunshine was blotted out of the triumph- 
 lighted sky, and the horizon was again overcast. The 
 shadow of the present veiled the future to our eyes. 
 
14 THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 
 
 We know now, Blower, that this was but a foolish 
 notion — a silly sentiment. The man whose death 
 blotted out the sunlight of that mid-April day was not 
 exceptionally great, if indeed he^ was great at all, 
 judging by our later and, of course, better standards. 
 Plain almost to uncouthness, he brought despair to the 
 tailor's heart. Unversed in the wisdom of the schools, 
 the highest culture yet esteems him but an uncut 
 diamond — a possible brilliant. Counting the JSTation 
 worthy to be saved only as it represented the idea of 
 human liberty and equal right, he is regarded by the 
 completer manhood of to-day as a man of one idea 
 whom the fever of the times cast into accidental prom- 
 inence. Simple as a child, he is, of course, not to be 
 ranked among statesmen. Little given to denunciation 
 and a stranger to self-glorification, he is naturally little 
 esteemed by an age which accounts fault-finding the 
 test of wisdom. Deeming the safety of the ISTation 
 a matter above all price, he is held in- little esteem 
 by a generation of publicists to v»diom an economic 
 theory outweighs in sacredness the rights of man. 
 Even they who have written of him — saving only 
 one or two — seem to have accounted him great 
 only in kindness, coarse wit, and a sort of instinctive 
 cunning in the measurement of men and the forecasting 
 of events. They depict him as fortunate, above all 
 other men, in favoring accidents. 
 
 Some have sought to popularize the story of his life 
 by magnifying the superficial coarseness of his nature. 
 Some who observed him closely saw nothing in his 
 character but a strange compound of th*e trickster and 
 
THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 15 
 
 the clown. To them his greatness was but accidental 
 and his marvelous career neither a legitimate result of 
 previous training, nor a beneficient miracle especially 
 ordained for the accomplishment of marvelous ends. 
 He was simply a lucky accident of an anomalous age. 
 There can be no doubt that these men thought they 
 knew him thoroughly. They came ver}^ near him; 
 knew his thought ; laughed at his jests ; wondered at 
 his success and still marvel at his fame. So far as they 
 were capable of doing, they understood his nature, and 
 no doubt have portrayed it truly. We cannot question 
 the tree-toad's knowledge of the oak on which he 
 dwells. 
 
 The new life which has grown up in the land has 
 very generally accepted their view. The thought which 
 was the inspiration of yesterday is looked upon with 
 kindly toleration to-day. We are told that the day of 
 sentiment has passed, and the era of practicality begun. 
 Gold is the criterion of value and ag^^regate wealth the 
 real test of statesmanship. Patriotism is well enough 
 as a reminisence, but parsimony is the key-note of pros- 
 perity. Devotion to the rights of man is an innocent 
 weakness ; gain the one thing needful. The capitalist's 
 margins are more important to the Nation than justice 
 to the oppressed. This is the wisdom of to-day, Blower. 
 It seems harsh and cold, base and degrading even, to us. 
 But we must remember that we are of yesterday — of 
 that recent past, which is always wrong in its strictures 
 of the present. To-day is always an iconoclast that 
 tramples ruthlessly beneath his heel the idols before 
 which yesterday bowed in adoration. We must be 
 
16 THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 
 
 patient, Blower, and learn to see our gods debased 
 without resentment, if not without sorrow. 
 
 Little by little we are being taught the lesson of 
 renunciation. This very year there was found in the 
 legislature of the state which holds his ashes as a sacred 
 trust, one — thank God there is yet hut one — who could 
 oppose, in the name and by the authority of her people, 
 an appropriation amounting to less than one-hundredth 
 'part of a cent per capita — one-thousandtli of a cent on 
 every million dollars of her wealth — to provide for the 
 adornment of the tomb of Ahraliam Lincoln on this 
 anniversary of his assassination ! 
 
 It seems to us incredible. But next year there 
 will perchance be many more like-minded with him. 
 We may even see the day when the sentiment 
 uttered in the legislature of a neighboring state, 
 a few days since, shall become all but universal, and 
 the champion and apologist, if not the leader, of 
 the "Copperheads" of Indiana be generally looked 
 upon as a nobler patriot, a more sagacious states- 
 man, and a worthier citizen of the Kepublic than 
 he who led her armies to victory. It is time, Blower, 
 that we prepared ourselves to see the verdict of yester- 
 day overthrown. "What we then deemed right may yet 
 be accounted the most grievous wrong ; what we fool- 
 ishly thought to be patriotism may yet be considered 
 oppression, and what we believe the nation's highest 
 glory may yet be held a folly bordering upon crime 
 and hardly susceptible of excuse. 
 
 Nevertheless, Blower, we will celebrate the double 
 anniversary once more — the birth-hour of an epoch and 
 
THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 17 
 
 the apotheosis of a hero-martyr. The flag shall float 
 apeak upon the staff above our windovv, shedding 
 blessings from its beauteous folds upon the rushing, 
 heedless passers-by. Your polislied bowl shall be 
 heaped with golden granules ; and as the smoke wreaths 
 rise above its rim, we will think upon old times, revive 
 almost-forgotten memories, and feel again the thrill of 
 perished aspirations. We will still believe that self-for- 
 getfulness is nobler than greed ; that patriotism is not 
 to be measured by a gold standard ; that righteousness 
 exalteth a nation; that justice to the lowly of earth is 
 honor to the Highest in Heaven. When the children 
 come — the bri^lit-eved heralds of to-morrow — we will 
 tell them the stoiy of this day when the land awoke 
 to a new life and the noblest of earth passed over to 
 his reward. Perchance in their lives the seed sown in 
 blood and watered with tears may spring into a fruit- 
 age all the richer for the winter of its waiting. Let us 
 not murmur, Blower, but steadfastly believe that " the 
 future, God's fallow, though barren it seem," shall yet 
 outvie the past in the ripe fruits of patriotic devotion. 
 For many a year we used to drape the flag upon 
 this anniversary. It w^as a foolish thing to do. We 
 mourned when we ought to have exulted. We bewailed 
 the woes of war when we ought to have magnified its 
 blessings, and rejoiced in the glory it shed upon the 
 land. What were the dead it left us in comparison 
 with the fresher, nobler life it brought ? Honor and 
 glory can not be measured even by blood and pain. So, 
 too, with him who went out from us in the hour of 
 victory. Why did we ever weep for him ? He passed 
 
 2 
 
18 THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 
 
 away when his work was done, leaving a memory un- 
 smirched with evil, a fame unsullied with a thought of 
 self. The purity of his life, the unselfishness of his de- 
 votion, and the grandeur of his character are the price- 
 less heritage of the ages. Suffering had not weakened 
 his frame ; failure had not cast its bhght upon his fame ; 
 malice had no opportunity to assail. In the vigor of 
 his strength, at the zenith of his glory, in the very hour 
 of victory, the booming cannon told at once his death 
 and immortality ! Happy beyond compare was he in 
 the hour and manner of his death. He did not live to 
 see the breath of detraction wither his laurels, nor feel 
 that the thought which inspired his life had lost all 
 significance to the wisest and best of his countrymen. 
 We mourn. Blower, for his great lieutenant who, lan- 
 guishing, still lives ; but for him who died in the moment 
 when war and peace met together to exalt his fame, 
 let us don the garments of rejoicing and chant the 
 songs of victory. 
 April 14, 1885. 
 
"FEEEDOM AND THE EIGHT;^ 
 
 'TTT'E are growing old, Blower, you and I. Yet the 
 VV years that we have seen ai^e not so many. 
 Hardly more than two score winters have passed over 
 the Veteran's head. Save the empty sleeve, he shows 
 little of the scath of life. His eye is as bright, his step 
 as elastic, and his heart as young — almost as young, it 
 seems — as when poor Joe pressed into his hand thy pol- 
 ished bowl, and whispered in his ear a dying comrade's 
 farewell message to his absent loved ones. His words 
 as they come back to memory now, seem strangely 
 overwrought. No doubt to-day would deem them 
 sadly out of place upon a soldier's stiffening lips. 
 
 " Tell them," he said, " I — died — for freedom — and 
 — and" — oh precious last word, let it not be lost! 
 How the feeble clay struggles with the dying thought! 
 At length it comes, so faintly that the bowed ear 
 hardly distinguishes between the whispered word, and 
 the night wind's murmur — " and the — right !" 
 
 No syllable of sorrow ! No thought of self ! No 
 murmur of disappointment ! No w^ord of consolation 
 for the father whose hope was blighted, for the mother 
 whose heart yet waits expectant for his coming — fondly 
 self-deceived by every manly footstep. Nay, not even 
 a tender message for that unwedded widow whose 
 heart was that day sealed forever against the thought 
 of earthly love. 
 
 19 
 
20 THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 
 
 There was no sorrow in his eyes. The whispered 
 words had no touch of sadness. The stillness that fol- 
 lows in the wake of battle hung above the bloody field. 
 The bright southern moon looked calmly down through 
 the soft filmy foliage of the early spring-time. It 
 lighted up the velvety half -grown leaves upon the giant 
 oaks, that crowned the crest on which the stru^o-le 
 had begun, until they seemed like silver clouds touched 
 with the tender green of summer seas. It was here 
 that the first few scattering shots were fired. The 
 skirmishers had swarmed out of the wood beyond, 
 crossed the narrow valley, and crept up the hillside 
 toward the sunimit where his little force awaited them. 
 It was only an outpost of the great army which lay 
 behind. He was not charged with any momentous 
 duty. The strap upon his shoulder marked only a 
 subaltern's grade. He was onlj^ expected to give the 
 alarm, and perhaps to check the enemy's advance an 
 instant, while the waiting lines prepared themselves 
 to meet the onset. 
 
 The attack was not unexpected, and though the 
 skirmishers wavered for a moment when they met his 
 fire, the lines which followed hard upon their footsteps 
 swept up the slope, scarring the great trunks with 
 wasted volleys and tainting the balmy air of spring with 
 sulphurous fumes, which overpowered the fragrance of 
 the jasmine, while the little force which held the sum- 
 mit fled, leaving their brave young commander bleeding 
 at the foot of one of the great oaks which crowned the 
 summit. Then the tide of battle ebbed and flowed 
 back and forth on the broad plateau beyond. After 
 
THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 21 
 
 a fierce conflict we forced them back over the ridge 
 into the wood from whence they had come. As the 
 sun went down the last hot hue of fire flashed out 
 upon the fleeing enemy a half mile to the southward 
 of their morning camp. 
 
 As the night fell upon us, I traced backward the 
 Dattle's bloody track in search of my friend. It is not 
 any easy thing to do by daylight. The glare of conflict, 
 while it photographs surrounding objects ineradicably 
 upon the soldier's mind, so distorts distances and rela- 
 tions that one is always surprised when he tries to 
 retrace the steps he has taken under fire. It needs not 
 the flight of seasons to disguise the battle field. Even 
 when first "Ardennes waves above them her gi^een 
 leaves," it is almost impossible for the soldier to desig- 
 nate the spot where his comrade fell. The night made 
 my task all the harder. 
 
 The moon, which hung a great red ball on the edge 
 of the horizon when I began my search, shifted the 
 shadows and gave to a score of other rounded hills the 
 outline of the little " knob " on which my friend had been 
 posted. Stark faces shone cold and white in the shad- 
 ows of the half -leaved trees, and stiffened limbs made 
 grotesque figures in the moonlight. I stopped more 
 than once to comfort some wounded sufferer. A thin, 
 ^vhite mist hung over the valley where the conflict had 
 been fiercest. Voices came out of it at intervals. The 
 low, indescribable moan that comes from the lips of 
 many wounded men, rising and falling in alternate 
 wailing cadances rose out of the silvery veil. The rum- 
 ble of wheels away to the right told of trains that ^vere 
 
22 THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 
 
 struggling to the front. A lantern shining dimly in 
 the hazy depth, showed others on a like quest with 
 myself. The sound of a spade grating on the stones 
 bespoke the woefulness of a hasty burial on the battle- 
 field. We knew the pursuit would begin at dawn, and 
 that the offices of friendship must be 'speedily per- 
 formed. As I passed along an unrecognized crest a 
 groan came out of the shadow of a great yellow-leaved 
 Spanish oak that stood in my path. I do not know 
 why I stopped so suddenly, while my heart stood still 
 Avith fear. Groans had not been rare along my way. 
 Every soldier knows how often solitary dead are 
 found upon the verge of the field of battle. You and 
 I remember, Blower, finding on the very outer edge 
 of a battle maelstrom, years after peace had drowned 
 the din of arms, a whitened skeleton — a picket killed 
 at his post, crouching behind a little natural mound, 
 beneath a spreading cedar whose drooping boughs 
 had hidden him from searching eyes. His rifle, rusty 
 and black, lay beneath him, the hammer drawn back, 
 the skeleton finger yet pressed upon the trigger. 
 
 I paused and listened — another groan. It is strange. 
 Blower, but even in that muffled moan I recognized my 
 friend. Poor Joe ! He might have lived I think had 
 help been at hand when he fell. But the hours which 
 had intervened had drained his life. He had but few 
 more moments and strength for few more words. He 
 had expected me. It Avas a contract of long standing 
 that after every battle we might share together, as 
 soon as duty Avould permit, each should seek out the 
 other. So he knew that I would come. Before the 
 
THE VETEKAN AND HIS PIPE. 23 
 
 light had faded from the sky he had traced upon a bit 
 of paper, with a twig dipped in his own blood, a few 
 last wishes. With the same rude stylus he had written 
 my name in bloody characters upon the buckskin cover 
 that encased your bowl. Poor, brave old Joe! He 
 clasped my hand weakly; said he knew I would come; 
 told me there Avas no hope, and whispering the message, 
 '' Tell them that I died for freedom and the right," fell 
 asleep. The moon had found an opening through the 
 leaves, and looked calmly down upon his face as he 
 breathed his last. Poor Joe ! You were his dying gift, 
 Blower. In all the years that have elapsed since then, 
 I have never looked upon your bowl without thoughts 
 of him. The buckskin case has long since worn a way, 
 but the red, straggling letters, " J-a-c-k," are still clear 
 to my eyes. The touch of the worn amber mouth- 
 piece, which his lips have pressed so often, ever brings 
 old memories back. 
 
 He died for the right. Blower — "freedom and the 
 right ! " So he said, so he thought, brave, self -forgetful 
 knight, who sought not adventure nor the fame of valor- 
 ous achievements, but the establishment of truth ! Yet, 
 brave and chivalrous as he was, this true Sir Galahad 
 was but a type of his time— that time to w^hicli we 
 were proud to belong and which we still half wonder- 
 ingly regret. A thousand men lay stark and cold upon 
 that field who had rendered up their lives with glad- 
 ness for the same idea — *' freedom and the right" — the 
 right of every man to equal power and privilege with 
 other men ! Say what we may. Blower, this was at the 
 bottom of it all ! One side represented the rights of 
 
24 thp: veteran and his pipe. 
 
 man, the other the rights of the master. The one meant 
 equal rights for all ; the other special privileges for a 
 class. It was only one phase of. the mighty conflict 
 which is as old as man — the rights of the many against 
 the encroachments of the few. 
 
 There are some who teach to-day, and many who 
 believe, that the cause for which so many died was of 
 a narrower scope, and its upholders animated b}^ 
 meaner motives. We better know the story of that 
 day, Blower; but we are getting old, and our ideas are 
 growing sadly old-fashioned, too. To smoke a pipe and 
 believe in human right as a practical, tangible thing— 
 a sentiment that ought to outrank and overpower all 
 other political ideas — are in the highest degree absurd, 
 to one who sucks rice-paper cigarettes, glorifies the 
 Anglican ideal, and studies political philosophy in the 
 sweet seclusion of his club. It is often asserted now- 
 adays as an undeniable truth that the sole object of the 
 IS'ational arms was to restore the National power, for- 
 getful that this ])Ower was made worthy of preservation 
 only by the simple fact that it was the sole representa- 
 tive of the idea of individual rights and equality based 
 upon the fact of humanity— poor Joe's " freedom and 
 the right" Two great ideas faced each other in the 
 struggle — the right of man to self-direction, and the 
 right of one man to control and modify another's acts 
 without his consent and against his will. Whether it 
 be termed "Rebellion" "War between the States" or 
 "War for separation," that is all there is of it. 
 
 "Freedom and the rio^ht!" The niHit was dim 
 
 o 
 
 about us, under the great oaks, when he whispered these 
 
THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 25 
 
 words, but Joe's eyes already beheld the light of an eter- 
 nal day. He made no mistake in his last earthly mes- 
 sage. If we fought merely to preserve our national 
 domain from dismemberment, who shall say that we 
 were right and they who stood over against us wrong ? 
 Who gave to us the right " to have and hold," to compel 
 twelve millions of people to accept, continue and main- 
 tain one form of government rather than another — to 
 remain a part of one nation instead of establishing 
 a separate government ? We may claim that such right 
 arises from the Federal compact with their sires, but 
 had our fathers power to bind and loose forever 'i Were 
 they infallible or their acts irrevocable ? Is the right 
 to hold territory once assimilated, always a sacred one ? 
 Is the subjugation of a people desiring self-government 
 essentially a holy cause ? 
 
 We did not fight for " our altars and our fires." 
 No peril threatened our homes. It is said we fought 
 to prevent secession. What gave us the right, the 
 moral right I mean, to resist with force of arms such a 
 movement. Joe's farewell message tells it all — " free- 
 dom and the right." Because man had a right to lib- 
 erty and life, to free access to that golden gate of op- 
 portunity — "the pursuit of happiness" — and because 
 our nation represented this idea, it was that we fought 
 for " freedom and the right " — the freedom of some mill- 
 ions who had been in bondage, and the rights of other 
 millions which had been held in abeyance by unright- 
 eous debasement of the freeman's privilege. We fought 
 too, or thought we fought, for the freedom and the rights 
 of the unnumbered millions who should stand between 
 
26 THE VETERAN AND HI^ PIPE. 
 
 our day of conflict and the hither shore of eternity. 
 We fought to secure infinite blessing to them and to 
 avert infinite woe. We counted our cause supremely 
 holy because success could add little to our own honor, 
 prosperity, or ease, but offered all its rich harvest of 
 blessing to other ages and an alien and oppressed peo- 
 ple. Even their freedom was not all for which we 
 fought, Blower. Poor Joe phrased it rightly under 
 the gray-green boughs of early spring, while the whip- 
 poorwill sent up his monotonous chant from the hill 
 beyond, and the evening breeze brought the odor of 
 the jasmine from the valley yet hidden by the pow- 
 der smoke. " Freedom and the right," he said — their 
 freedom and theh' rights whose liberty had been denied, 
 and whose rights had been curtailed in the past — the 
 freedom and the rights of man in all the future ! 
 
 We thought we were right, BloAver ; Joe thought 
 so. Those w^ho died and those who lived in that 
 strange yesterday counted the conflict righteous in its 
 purpose, infinite in its consequences, and inexorable 
 in its behests. Were we right? Was Joe right. 
 Blower ? Were the dead whose sweet blood nourishes 
 oak and pine to-day — were they right or wrong ? The 
 question seems sacrilegious. I fancy that the fire 
 within your bowl grows redder and hotter as my lips 
 frame the inquiry. Yet it is a question which must be 
 asked and answered ; not by us, but by the American 
 people ; not by to-day only, but by many unrisen to- 
 morrows. 
 
 If we were right, then some (me must have been 
 wrong. If "the blue" stood for righteousness, then as- 
 
THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 27 
 
 suredly " the gray " meant oppression. Light and dark- 
 ness cannot coexist. Yet it will not do to-day to inti- 
 mate that those who stood over against us then were 
 wrong. To impute error to them, even be it never so 
 hghtly done, is accounted not only an act of folly, but a 
 grievous wrong. 
 
 I will uot do them wrong ; I rather choose 
 To wrong the dead . 
 
 Why are opposites irreconciliable, or antipodes in- 
 capable of conjunction ? Why should right be right, 
 or wrong be wrong ? If only we might say, " There is 
 no right," we might escape the odious inference of 
 another's wrong. Or if both might be in the right, there 
 could be no ground for blame. Perhaps t-Jiis may be 
 true. Freedom may not have been exactly right, nor 
 slavery entirely wrong. Perchance the Nation did not 
 stand for freedom after all, nor the Confederacy mean 
 injustice to the weak and oppression by the strong ; 
 Joe may have been wrong even at the last. Unfortu- 
 nately sincerity is no reliable test of truth. Something 
 more than honesty of purpose is needed to constitute 
 right conduct. Honesty is always the chief ally of 
 fanaticism, and Joe may have been a fanatic. 
 
 It is said that the voice of the people is the voice of 
 God, but that it must be " the still, small voice," the 
 outcome of the sober second thought which speaks the 
 will of the Eternal — not the voice of passion nor the 
 roar of the excited populace. Amid the tumult of 
 arms we are told that not only the laws are silent, but 
 the voice of reason also. It is only after the frenzy of 
 conflict has ]>assed away that we must look for that 
 
28 THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 
 
 calm judgment of the event which shall bear the test 
 of time and truly deserve to represent the findings of 
 the infinite mind upon the facts of yesterday. That 
 time would seem at length to have come. It is twenty 
 years since the last battle-shock sent its rapturous thrill 
 through the hearts of war-worn veterans. During 
 that time one-half of those who then lived and 
 wrought have gone to their eternal rest. To-day sits 
 in calm and unbiased judgment upon yesterday. A 
 new life makes up the verdict. Was Joe right accord- 
 ing to this judgment ? 
 
 Alas, Blower, there is every reason to believe that 
 the Nation of to-day is ready to ignore the spirit and 
 the works of yesterday. Of those who fought against 
 us hardly one in ten thousand has admitted that they 
 were in the wrong, or that we were in the right. The 
 slave's freedom, as a formally accomplished fact, a 
 state established by legal enactment, they admit. 
 That the right to free the slave and enfranchise the 
 freedman, inhered in the Nation, or that the " freedom 
 and the right " for which Joe fought, or any privileges 
 based thereon, are founded in natural justice, they stub- 
 bornly and almost universally deny. They admit the 
 failure of their hope of separate dominion, and declare 
 their willingness to abide by the arbitrament of the 
 sword ; but twenty years have not sufficed to convince 
 them of its righteousness, or lead them to admit that a 
 warfare, waged in support of slavery, contained any 
 element of wrong. On the contrary, they vaunt 
 their submission as a meritorious thing ; and boast of 
 their forbearance in recognizing and tolerating a gov- 
 
THE VETEEAN AND HIS PIPE. 29 
 
 ernment reestablished, as they claim, by injustice and 
 oppression. 
 
 One who has just been chosen to represent the 
 power and dignity of this government at a foreign 
 court, at a public dinner of congratulation given him 
 by admiring friends in the late capital of the Confed- 
 eracy, recently declared in a tone of proud conde- 
 scension, that those who fought for secession were now 
 loyal to the IS'ational Government, though its au- 
 thority was ''founded on a gross and bloody viola- 
 tion of public rights." 
 
 The Confederate hosts in battle array, contended 
 that the " freedom and right " for which Joe thought 
 he died, were in fact wrongs to which the}^ would 
 never submit. Today they aver that they have sub- 
 mitted thus far to such wrong — a wrong " founded on a 
 perversion of public right," remember. Blower — and 
 claim by such formal subirission, to have acquired the 
 right to practically annul the privileges conferred upon 
 an oppressed people by the conquerors of their 
 oppressors. Only yesterday an arrogant mouthpiece 
 of the sentiment of the South, speaking through the 
 pages of a great magazine^ — one who not content with 
 his simple signature, adds thereto in '' small caps " 
 what no other writer deems necessary, the place of his 
 residence — this representative thinker of the lately re- 
 bellious states declares that the " victorious armies of 
 the Xorth could not have enforced and maintained ' at 
 the South ' the policy of the civil rights bill " — a " bill " 
 which to-day is the law of the land, and most unques- 
 
30 THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPJ:. 
 
 tionably a part of "the right" for which poor Joe 
 thought he was rendering up his hfe. 
 
 But this is not alL One can hardly blame a proud 
 people for refusing to admit themselves to have been in 
 the wrong. It is their right to do so, and I am not sure 
 we do not all like them the better for it, even you and I, 
 Blower ; but they have no right to expect or demand 
 that we who fought with Joe, or the nation whose honor 
 Ave maintained, shall admit their claim or recognize in 
 them a fitness to bear rule or represent authority be- 
 cause of it. Yet this very thing is what we have done. 
 The public sentiment even of the North declares 
 against the thought of yesterday. With clamorous 
 shamefacedness we cry out for forgetfulness and im- 
 plore the shield of oblivion for our acts and motives. 
 We insist on leaving a dead past to bury its dead. 
 The present chooses among the men of yesterday with 
 exceeding care, one who never yet has uttered a single 
 word of commendation of that ''freedom and the 
 right " for which Joe died, as the Nation's executive 
 head. Two of the great departments of government 
 are placed under the control of men who yet stoutly 
 maintain the moral turpitude of the National cause. 
 Men are selected to represent the country abroad who 
 have defiantly refused to recognize the righteousness of 
 the results of the conflict, and thereby have even cast a 
 doubt on their own citizenship. And worst of all, 
 saddest of all, old friend, those of our Northern kith 
 and kin who rejoiced when our arms suffered reverse, 
 and mourned when victory sat upon our banners — 
 those who mocked at Lincoln in his agony and de- 
 
THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 81 
 
 nounced Grant in the hour of triumph — these men are 
 singled out through all the land to typify the thought 
 of to-day and represent the power and authority of the 
 government saved from destruction by the valor and 
 self-sacrifice of such as he whose heroism w^e recall on 
 this anniversary. It is hard enough to see the flag 
 placed at half-mast in honor of one whose chosen rela- 
 tion to our government was that of a traitor and an 
 enemy, Avho inspired from the secure shelter of a neu- 
 tral territory the incendiary's torch and the murderer's 
 dagger ; but it is a thousand times harder to see those 
 who exulted in Joe's death vaunting themselves to- 
 day upon the overthrow of the principles for which he 
 fought. 
 
 Yet we will not be disconsolate, old friend. If 
 yesterday was but half right, it Avill stand foreover 
 famous in history for what it believed and what it did. 
 Joe may not have died for " freedom and the right ;" 
 nay, he may have given his life for folly and the wrong, 
 but he did it freely and gladly ; and we will ever think 
 of his dying face glorified by the moonlight shining 
 through the rift in the soft spring foliage as that of 
 one w^earing the halo of self-sacrifice, which alone en- 
 titles mortals to claim immortality. 
 
 April 31, 1885. 
 
HIGH WATEE MAEK. 
 
 AS the season advances during which military 
 operations are possible, each day becomes an 
 anniversary, Blower. By many of our comrades this 
 day is no doubt regarded as one of the saddest and 
 most humiliating in its reminiscences of all those which 
 mark the progress of the long, uncertain conflict be- 
 tween freedom and slavery, or more properly, between 
 the right to be free and the privilege of enslavement. 
 Yet in truth this day, twenty-two years ago, marked 
 the climax of our peril and the beginning of the 
 end. Up to that time the Confederacy had met with 
 no disaster which a great victory on the Potomac might 
 not at any time overbalance. Then it received a hurt 
 for which there was no cure. Looking out of our prison 
 windows on that day we noted the effect of the blow 
 that fell upon the heart of the Confederacy. 
 
 Only the day before, its congress had prescribed the 
 banner that should wave above its embattled hosts, and 
 had defined the escutcheon which they fondly hoped to 
 place among the permanent emblems of national sover- 
 eignty. It bore across its face a significant appeal to 
 the God of battles. With the morrow's setting sun men 
 looked into each other's faces and with trembling lips 
 
 Note— May 3, 1808. The battle of Chancellorsvllle was fought on this 
 day, and " Stonewall '' Jackson received the wovnids of which he died on the 
 10th of the same niontli, which latter date was most appropriately chosen as 
 the Confederate " Memorial Day." 
 
 32 
 
THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 33 
 
 inquired, '' Is it thus that the Avenger answers ? " For 
 the first time in the liistory of the young nation the 
 gleam of hostile sabers was seen from the dome beneath 
 which her legislators were assembled, and armed foes 
 for the first time entered the city's gates. Yet it was 
 a day of humiliation and disaster for the great Repub- 
 lic also. He " who maketli the wrath of man to praise 
 Him" on that day not only rebuked those who wrongly 
 trusted, but smote those who arrogantly scorned. It 
 is not without reason that the Confederate survivors of 
 that struggle adopted as their " Memorial Day " the 
 one which marked the immediate result of this day's 
 mishap to their cause. This day saw the beginning 
 of its overthrow ; Appomattox only brought the end. 
 
 At the outset of the war there can be no doubt that 
 the apparent chances of success were very clearly in 
 favor of the national government. We have been ac- 
 customed to magnify our difficulties, Blower ; but in 
 comparison with those which faced the Confederacy, 
 history will declare them to have been not worthy of 
 consideration. Indeed, so overwhelming were our 
 advantao^es as an established e^overnment with a work- 
 ing organization, and recognized national position, that 
 those who prided themselves upon their wisdom, and 
 foolishly regarded war as merely a commercial venture — 
 a trial of dead strength — who regarded numbers and 
 equipment as the chief elements of an army's effective- 
 ness — did not hesitate to predict a brief conflict and 
 assured victory for the national forces. If a man of 
 capacity and will, unfettered by the limitations which 
 an absent and over-cautious superior imposed, and un- 
 3 
 
84 THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 
 
 trammeled by the requirements of counselors who 
 demanded the defeat of the enemy without the injury 
 of friend or foe — in other words, if a competent com- 
 mander having only military- aims in view, had held 
 undivided control of the resources of our government 
 at the outset, there can hardly be a doubt that these 
 predictions would have been fulfilled. Under compe- 
 tent leadership, with thorough administrative support, 
 the resources of the national government oughi to have 
 swept the fungus growth of rebellion out of existence 
 almost in a day. 
 
 The newspaper clamor, " On to Richmond," which 
 for a score of years has been objurgated as the senseless 
 overture of the first great disaster to our arms, the de- 
 feat of Bull Run, was in truth but the voice of an 
 universal instinct. The seed of revolt may germinate 
 slowdy, but once it bursts its capsule no wisdom or 
 foresight can measure its growth. A baby's foot 
 crushes the tender twig to-day ; a giant's strength is 
 powerless to bend the towering oak to-morrow. If the 
 government had used its resources at the outset to 
 destroy its enemy instead of showing such anxiety to 
 defend itself, the Confederacy would have been crushed 
 as easily as the eggshell to which it was so often 
 likened. To a warlike people, with a warlike spirit 
 and warlike purpose, the mihtary problem of 1861 was 
 not difficult or doubtful. It was the will to conquer, 
 the determination to overthrow, obliterate and punish 
 that was wanting rather than the powder. We hesitated 
 to strike lest some one should be hurt. Instead of 
 hurling all our power on the presumptuous enemy, we 
 
THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 85 
 
 waited for him to gather strength and make the 
 attack in his own wa}^ and at his own time. Even 
 when we finally assumed the offensive, it was only to 
 meet the aggression of the enemy. The battle of Bull 
 Run was fought upon the ground it made historic only 
 because the neglect of a subordinate prevented the 
 orders of the Confederate commander from being pub- 
 lished to his lieutenants in time to allow the forward 
 movement to begin at daylight, as he intended. A 
 day's precipitation or half a day's delay and the Con- 
 federacy would have been shattered into fragments by 
 the first great battle shock. A day before and Jack- 
 son and his forces would not have been in the fight. A 
 half -day later and the Confederates would have been 
 the attacking party. In either event the issue can 
 hardly be regarded as doubtful. The Nation, because 
 of its established and consolidated character, was able 
 to endure the strain of defeat. The Confederacy — a 
 half-established venture in government — would have 
 been hopelessly overwhelmed by a single great catastro- 
 phe, followed up by a vigorous assault, for which abund- 
 ant material was at hand. Up to that time the advan- 
 tage was very clearly with the National Government. 
 
 From that hour, however, the conditions were 
 reversed. On the 22d day of July, 1861, the Confed- 
 eracy was a thousand times stronger than on the 
 morning of the 21st. From that day until the 2d day 
 of May, 1863, the odds were with the Confederacy. 
 If Jackson had been at the head of the Confederate 
 army, instead of Johnson ; if Jefferson Davis had not 
 been the strange compound of vanity and vacillation 
 
36 THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 
 
 that he is; if Beauregard had been able to see any- 
 thino- outside his own shadow- in the sunshine of suc- 
 cess, we should have never seen the peaceful, quiet 
 year of waiting that ensued, while McClellan prepared 
 and polished the ponderous machine he deemed neces- 
 sary to enable him to face with fear and trembling the 
 cohorts of the foe. But even this was not suflRcient to 
 assure the triumph of the National army. The mag- 
 nificently equipped battalions which set out by land 
 and sea to conquer the capital of the Confederacy, in 
 the spring of 1802, were not enough to restore the 
 equilibrium of chances. Even then the odds remained 
 with the Confederates. 
 
 They had three great advantages : a united people, 
 a defensive warfare, and a government made bold 
 to audacity by the magnitude and peril of their 
 undertaking. On the other hand, three things con- 
 spired to endanger or delay the success of the Union 
 arms: an overestimate of the enemy's prowess, an 
 uncertain public sentiment, and a strange admixture 
 of military and pohtical motives. Of the tw^o great 
 armies which faced each other at that time, the one 
 excelled in numbers, the other in spirit. The one had 
 behind it a nation fertile in resources, but divided in 
 purpose. The other represented a people weak in 
 administrative and constructive development, but uni- 
 fied by a common aim, and rich in the audacity which 
 self-confidence inspires. The one had the sea for its 
 ally, while the other had the mountains and the rivers 
 for their bulwarks. But above all things, these armies 
 differed in the fact that one numbered among* its lead- 
 
THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 37 
 
 ers Thomas Jonathan Jackson, the "Stonewall" behind 
 whose genius for Avar the Confederacy rested in confi- 
 dent security, while the other had among its recognized 
 leaders none worthy ©f comparison with him in the 
 power of achievement. At the West, it is true, the 
 National cause was developing men who were destined 
 to exhibit qualities hardly excelled in history. Grant, 
 Sherman, Sheridan and Thomas, the wondrous galaxy of 
 western leaders around whose names clusters the glory 
 of the closing years of war, had as yet only given prom- 
 ise of power. Leaving out of consideration Meade, 
 whose painstaking care gave us Gettysburg, and whose 
 caution allowed Lee's army to escape destruction, these 
 are the only Generals on the Federal side who dis- 
 played a capacity to originate strategic movements, 
 conduct great campaigns, win decisive victories, and 
 destroy opposing armies. This is no disparagement to 
 others, BloAver. There are in all armies thousands of 
 good soldiers and hundreds of good lieutenants, but 
 rarely more than one gi^eat leader. 
 
 On this day twenty-two years ago. Blower, Grant 
 was only the victor of Henry and Donelson, the un van- 
 quished defender of Pittsburg Landing, and the long- 
 baffled assailant of Yicksburg. At that time he was 
 just beginning that movement which crowned him con- 
 queror of the " Gibraltar of the South." Sherman was 
 but a corps commander under him ; Thomas was only 
 Kosecrans' lieutenant, and Sheridan's ambition looked 
 no higher than the division he had just received. Our 
 great leaders were yet in embryo. Meade alone was 
 neari^r.g the zenith of an unexpected fame. 
 
38 THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 
 
 For the Confederates, however, this was the chmac- 
 teric hour. Lee stood among a group of faithful and 
 unquestioning subordinates, first only in rank and in 
 the power to direct and utilize the energies of others.- 
 Rarely indeed has any leader seen about him such an 
 array of confident, harmonious co-workers. Those two 
 elements of discord, Johnston and Beauregard, had 
 been eliminated from the army of IS'orthern Virginia, 
 and Lee stood at the head of a host among whose 
 captains rivalry was unknown and generous emulation 
 always rife. When the sun rose on that day the Con- 
 federate cause was at its zenith. "When the morrow 
 came it had won a great victory, and begun that decline 
 which ended only at Appomattox. 
 
 A few days before an overconfident young general, 
 Avhose tongue had lately wagged boastfully against the 
 great, patient, self-forgetful heart at "Washington, 
 through whose favor he had been exalted, had crossed 
 the river which had so long separated the hostile arma- 
 ments, and offered battle to his great opponent. He 
 brought with him an army splendidly equipped, well- 
 drilled and finely officered. Its veteran rank and file 
 were smarting from the sting of undeserved reproaches. 
 Its commander bore in his pocket the generous rebuke 
 of the President, who, referring to his insubordinate 
 boasting, only urged him to make good his claim to 
 supreme command by winning a decisive victory. 
 S])urred by this incentive Hooker had, after the most 
 elaborate preparation, finally made ready to deliver 
 battle to the foe whom two years of victory had made 
 doubly formidable. His army lacked but two things 
 
THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 39 
 
 to insure victory — a leader who could command like 
 Lee, and a general who could win battles like Jackson. 
 , That was a terrible May Day our comrades cele- 
 brated under the fresh-leaved oaks at Chancellorsville, 
 Blower. All day "in even scale the battle hung." In 
 the capital of the Confederacy, fifty miles away, we 
 heard tlie thunder of the guns, borne on the soft 
 spring breeze. From the windows of Libby we saw 
 the glare of beacon-lights that marked the course of 
 our daring troopers as they swept around the beleagu- 
 ered city. The veterans who guarded the prison looked 
 grave, but did their duty with soldierly precision. The 
 next day our forces pressed the enemy backward, for 
 Jackson and his men were not there. Our vainglorious 
 vouno^ commander exulted in the thouo-ht that he had 
 gone to succor the threatened capital. But when "the 
 sun hung Ioav o'er the westling hill," with the swoop 
 of an eagle on his prey, Jackson burst upon the unpro- 
 tected and unsus]:)ecting right flank and swept the thin 
 line back upon itself, while the shrill shouts that 
 heralded Confederate success, thrilled with terror the 
 soldiers who were preparing to bivouac after the day's 
 weary conflict. They knew that thunderbolt of war, 
 " the right hand of Lee," was upon them and his name 
 had so long been a synonym of victory that almost the 
 whole army fled before him, and the young leader who 
 had already begun to dream of victory had now to 
 exert himself to the utmost to save what was left of 
 his shattered battalions. The Confederacy was again 
 victorious, but Jackson would command no more. 
 His loss far outweighed the triumph of their arms. 
 
40 THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 
 
 The unerring instinct of an imperiled people saw in his 
 death the presage of disaster. The bulletins of victory 
 could not restore confidence to the dwellers in the 
 capital. 
 
 The veterans who had guarded the prison were 
 hastily marched away and their places supplied with 
 undisciplined volunteers. The terror and apprehension 
 that were apparent on all sides, the hosts of frightened 
 fugitives whom we could see from the prison windows 
 fleeing from the city, all these things led us to believe 
 the rumor of Confederate defeat, and discredit the reas- 
 suring dispatches that followed close upon its heels. 
 That night the fires that marked the track of our 
 cavalry were nearer still. - A young officer was brought 
 in to share our imprisonment, captured almost within 
 the city limits. The '' home guards," who kept watch 
 and ward over us, were greatly excited. Few slept that 
 night in Libby. In that upper room where almost half 
 a thousand were confined there were exulting songs and 
 sleepless vigils. Every eye watched with anxious 
 scrutiny the points of light that told of the raiders' 
 presence. 
 
 Every moment we looked with foolish expectancy 
 to see the flame of battle sweep over some dark and 
 silent crest. Was not Jackson dead? Did not our 
 custodians think defeat was sure if Jackson no longer 
 lived to lead? So we sung songs in the darkness and 
 waited for the dawn and '' Fighting Joe," who needed 
 
 * Kilpatrick's cavalry raid came so near the city that the light of its fires 
 was easily seen. The city might unquestionably have been seized and 
 burned by them if the true condition of affairs had been understood. 
 
THE VETEEAN AND HIS PIPE. 41 
 
 all his courage and all his skill that day to rescue his 
 army from the disaster following the last blow of the 
 dead chieftain. While w^e crowded about the low case- 
 ments, peering between the bars at the signal lights 
 that flashed along the hills beyond, a voice full of 
 malignant hate informed us that the guards had orders 
 to fire on any who showed themselves at the windows. 
 Even as he spoke a bullet whizzed through the open 
 casement and buried itself in the joists above. The 
 cool evening breeze came in through the narrow sashes, 
 where four hundred panting, sweltering men waited 
 for its balmy breath. But the sentries were ordered to 
 fire upon any one whom it tempted near the grating, 
 or whom the hope of rescue induced to watch the beacon 
 lights which shone above the city's roofs. 
 
 It was a night we shall never forget, Blower — a 
 night of hope, anxiety and rage. It is said. Blower, 
 that the slender young o^cer who gave the order 
 which put a dead-line in front of every window in that 
 crowded room was a young Marylander, whose desire 
 to serve his country's enemies was so intense that he 
 rted across the border, and begged to be made an as- 
 sistant jailer in the most famous of rebel prisons. It 
 was not a hard or dangerous place, and decidedly not 
 an unprofitable one. It was a queer position for an 
 enthusiastic Maryland rebel to select in which to dis- 
 play his devotion to the Southern cause, but patriotism 
 takes on curious guises and covets strange tasks at 
 times. It is said. Blower, but I can not believe it true, 
 that this assistant of the fiery-tempered soldier who 
 was the commandant of the prison, this imported 
 
42 THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 
 
 •I 
 
 deputy-turnkey, after various characteristic evolutions, 
 has become the right hand of the Secretary of the 
 Treasury of the United States, under whose direction 
 and control our "civil service" is to be purified and 
 " off ensive partisans " decapitated "in the interests of 
 good government " and a " reunited country." If it 
 indeed be true we can well understand, Blower, that his 
 experience in Libby will enable him to select with 
 great readiness those " offensive partisans" with whose 
 countenances he may there have become familiar, and 
 whose names he may recall as appearing on the reg- 
 ister of that institution. Whether the newly-devised 
 system of bookkeeping* which has been adopted in 
 the Treasury, was modeled on that which prevailed in 
 Libby or not, will probably never be known. It has 
 at least some features in common with the system there 
 prevailing ; the funds on hand are counted among its 
 liabilities ; hard cash is nbt considered an available 
 asset, and the surplus is redeemed without the for- 
 mality of being paid out. 
 
 We have no objection to the ex-Confederate, 
 Blower. The manhood which maintained the " lost 
 cause" is worthy of all honor. We w^ould bedeck with 
 flowers the graves of their dead as readily as the last 
 resting-places of our comrades — not because they were 
 right. Blower, but because they were brave. To all of 
 those who fought we accord the meed of sincerity, 
 and to many of those who were for the wrong we 
 
 * One of the first acts of Mr. Cleveland's administration was to chang-e 
 the form of the customary monthly statement of the public debt so as to re- 
 duce the apparent siu'plus. Whatever may have been the real motive, it 
 was an act which could not fail to arouse suspicion. 
 
THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 43 
 
 render unbounded admiration. If they have surrend- 
 ered not only the weapons of warfare but the princi- 
 ples on which rebellion rested, the Republic can 
 have no worthier citizens. If they still count the 
 reestablishment of National power ''a great public 
 wrong," have "no regrets to offer and no apologies 
 to make " for having aided in carrying on a rebellion 
 founded on slavery, and demanding a myriad heca- 
 tombs of our best lives, w^e can not, with all our char- 
 ity, count them worthy to control the policy of the 
 country, and shape the destinies of a free people. But 
 if they must bear sway, if those who supported the 
 Confederacy, and still believe the " lost cause " to have 
 been a holy one, are rightfully and lawfully entitled to 
 control and administer the government, let us at least 
 hope and pray that the bravest and best may be taken, 
 and the meanest and basest be left. A deputy jailer 
 of Libby^ and the engineer of the Alabamaf may be 
 very good men as men go, but the flavor of an un- 
 pleasant notoriety renders them hardly appropriate 
 
 * Eugene Higgins, a well-known Baltimore "heeler," having a most 
 fragrant record not only in connection with the politics of that city, but 
 for his intimate relations with its gambling dens was made "Appointment 
 Clerk " of the Treasury Department immediately on Mr. Cleveland's acces- 
 sion. He is said to have solicited and obtained a place as an under keeper 
 In Libby Prison during the war. His appointment was claimed to be the 
 especial act of Mr. Manning, but it has been shrewdly guessed that he was 
 found valuable in transacting certain private negotiations in which the 
 President was personally interested and thereby became both necessary and 
 dangerous to an Executive pledged to " Reform." His continuance in prac- 
 tical control of the lesser patronage of the Ti'easury Department is not only 
 a disgrace to the administration, but a direct and positive insult to the 
 decent manhood of the country. 
 
 + Among the early appointments of Mr. Cleveland was that of an 
 engineer of the famous Rebel cruiser, Alabama^ to a lucrative place under 
 the government. 
 
44 THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 
 
 exponents of the National power or fitting agents of 
 the highest executive authority. 
 
 Let us hope that those who fought witli Jaclvson at 
 Chancellorsville may be preferred to those who bullied 
 and insulted the unfortunate victims of war's reverses- 
 within the " prison bounds " of the Confederacy. Let 
 us not be too censorious, however, Blower. Those 
 who rule by Caesar's leave must obey his nod ; and we 
 must not forget that even the worst of those who 
 upheld the power of the Confederacy and did its will, 
 whether on the field of battle or in the prison-pen, are 
 worthier of preferment than that spawn of Northern 
 life, the aborted monsters whom freedom nourished 
 only to hear their snarls as they hung upon the track 
 of her armies, and jeered the sons who fell in her de- 
 fense. Better the meanest of those who served the 
 cause of treason than even the best of those wlio wished 
 it loell hit dared not serve I " 
 
 May 2, 1885. 
 
"THE PEESIDEI^T VISITS GETTYS- 
 BURG;^ 
 
 THIS was a headline in every morning paper from 
 Maine to California to-day, Blower. It was the 
 first thing that caught my eye after I had lighted the 
 fragrant granules in your bowl and folded the damp 
 sheet upon the desk so that one hand might hold it — not 
 so easy a thing for the Veteran to do, by the way, as any 
 one may see who Avill undertake the fofding of one of 
 our mammoth dailies with a single hand. Millions of 
 eyes have no doubt read it already ; others will note 
 it during the day, and before the week is ended prac- 
 tically the whole country will know that the President 
 "visited" Gettysburg on Monday. Yery many will 
 curiously scan the brief and colorless paragraph which 
 relates what the President did not do and did not say 
 upon this visit to Gettysburg. Some no doubt will 
 smile and some may sneer, but there are many, 
 Blower, who will read the pitiful recital as we did, 
 through the mist of gathering tears. 
 
 Who is this President, Blower, and why should he 
 visit Gettysburg ? What is this Gettysburg, that any 
 one should care to climb its hills, measure its green slopes, 
 guess the grade of its declivities, and trace the lines of 
 its escarped crests ? Why should tears dim the Vet- 
 eran's sight as he reads all there was to tell of the 
 
 45 
 
46 THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 
 
 President's visit — the hints of what he saw and heard, 
 the full story of what he said and did ? 
 
 I can well imagine one of the children who some- 
 times invade this sanctuary consecrated to memories of 
 the past, asking such queries in wondering tones, for 
 Gettysburg is fast becoming an insignificant fact of a 
 past which we are taught that duty requires us only to 
 forget. To them the President's visit to this historic 
 amphitheater means no mo/e than if he had gone to 
 Baltimore or tarried for a day in the little town made 
 memorable by his birth. To them laughter and tears 
 are alike inexplicable as a result of the perusal of this 
 paragraph. With us, Blower, it is far different. Yes- 
 terda}^ and to-day have rarely been brought so close 
 together, or been shown in such vivid contrast as by 
 this visit of the President to Gettysburg. 
 
 Who is the President who yesterday visited Gettys- 
 burg? He is the executive head of a great nation, 
 whose blazon flaunts the proud assertion that it has 
 welded many peoples into one great power — that in 
 its unity are hidden many peaceful and harmonious 
 constituents. It boasts of many states in one nation, 
 many peoples in one country, many rulers in one sov- 
 ereignty. The President represents, in the eyes of the 
 world, the power and dignity of a nation builded 
 upon equality of rights and parity of power among 
 all its constituent elements. Khode Island stands side by 
 side with New York in power and influence in the na- 
 tional councils and in the selection of the representa- 
 tive of its authority. As states — as constituent ele- 
 ments of the whole — the least is equal to the greatest. 
 
THE VErEEAN AND HIS PIPE. 47 
 
 It matters not how weak the lesser may become or 
 how potent the greater — how narrow the Hmits of one 
 or how broad the boundaries of another may be, the 
 justice which holds with even hand the scales upon our 
 nation's arm, doles out to each, one equal measure of 
 constituent power. So, too, among the people of the 
 various states themselves, the national power is in like 
 manner distributed. To every one hundred and fifty- 
 four thousand of the citizens of the United States, in 
 this tenth decade of organic union, is given one voice in 
 the national council — one aliquot part of the sovereign 
 power. To each one of these citizens of the republic, 
 belongs also an undivided share of the power and 
 priyilege devolving upon the whole. Well may we 
 boast, therefore, that our nation is the fruit of liberty 
 and equality — a unity arising from equally endowed 
 numbers. E phtribios unum — out of man}^ states one 
 state — out of many wills one sovereign — out of many 
 equal rights one all-protecting power. The President 
 is the head of this nation, the incarnation of its author- 
 ity, the representative of its sovereign will. He is ou7' 
 President, Blower, and though he may not in all things 
 represent our individual will, he is clothed upon with 
 our modicum of power, exercises the authority pri- 
 marily vested in us, and is charged with the preserva- 
 tion not only of our rights, but of that national honor 
 which makes our share in the whole a thing of price- 
 less value or a heritage of immeasurable shame. 
 
 I take it. Blower, that this power of which the 
 President is, for the time being the trustee, is nothing 
 less than that " freedom and the right " for which poor 
 
48 THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 
 
 Joe SO willingly rendered up his life. To him the free- 
 dom of the citizen and the right of the sovereign were, 
 in their last analysis, one and the same thing. The 
 right was but the basis on wjiich the privilege of free- 
 dom rested, its untrammeled exercise being to him the 
 very essence of human liberty. By the forms of law 
 one man, the President, is made the representative of 
 this freedom and the trustee of this universal right, as 
 well as the guardian of both. If all those whose. con- 
 joint wills make up the national sovereignty, had the 
 privilege of free and voluntary choice in his selection, 
 then he is by right, as well as form, the trustee of this 
 sovereignty. If to any considerable extent the free- 
 dom of individual choice was by any means debarred 
 to any lawfully entitled to exercise the same, then the 
 right on which the privilege of every citizen is based, 
 has been invaded, and that equity which no informality 
 can defeat and no lapse of time debar, stamps his selec- 
 tion with the brand of fraud. Be this as it may, how- 
 ever, for the time being, he represent us ; he is our de- 
 fctcto head ; the trustee of our rights and the represent- 
 ative of our sovereignty. His acts are valid, and he 
 binds not only himself, but the American people, by 
 his words and deeds. Our honor is in his keeping, and 
 he has power to cover us with shame. He is our Presi- 
 dent, Blower, and by that fact entitled to something- 
 more than our formal obedience and regard. 
 
 It is true that the usurper who is inducted into 
 office with all the forms of law does not thereby acquire 
 title to the throne. The oaths which Gloster took at 
 Westminster did not make the blood-stained ruffian 
 
THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 49 
 
 rightful king. Underneath the sign and seal of office, 
 under all the trappings of authority, yet remains for- 
 ever quick, the equity which reaches to the root of 
 right. It is charged — and there is none that can with 
 reason or truth deny — that but for the direct or indi- 
 rect disfranchisement of voters by the hundred 
 thousand, but for the fact that thousands upon thou- 
 sands of citizens whose rights were purchased Avith the 
 blood of heroes, were debarred from the free exercise 
 of those rights, or their ballots when cast deprived of 
 due effect, this man who bears the title of President 
 to-day would never have been asked to meet with vet- 
 erans at Gettysburg. There is probably not any man 
 of reasonable intelligence who believes that if the 
 voters of certain southern states had been allowed 
 freely and without fraud, compulsion, or the fear of 
 harm, to have cast their ballots as they chose, and had 
 them counted as they desired, the verdict in at least 
 five of those states avouM not have been other than it 
 was, and thereby the entire results of the national 
 election have been reversed. No one can question this 
 who will study for a moment the statistics of popula- 
 tion, the returns of the election, the facts of the recent 
 past and the continuous and reiterated assertion on the 
 part of the whites of those states of their right and 
 determination to rule, regardless of the will or right of 
 their colored fellow-citizens, or of the whites who were 
 politically affiliated with them. 
 
 So far as the right is concerned. Blower, the 
 President, who went to Gettysburg yesterday, is a 
 usurper. He represents the I^ational power only 
 4 
 
50 THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 
 
 because some thousands of her constituent sover- 
 eigns were deprived of their freedom — of their right 
 to rule. Such wrong touches every other man's right. 
 ]^ot only is every citizen entitled to exercise his 
 own aliquot part of the national power, but he has a 
 right to demand— nay, his own right may be made null if 
 he does not demand and secure — for every other citizen 
 the same opportunity. If fraud or violence is to be 
 justified by the result, if the forms of law alone are 
 necessary to lawful sovereignty, then any conspiracy 
 which shall direct its efforts toward vitiating the ballot 
 or corrupting the results, may thereby rightfully estab- 
 lish itself in povfer, and continue indefinitely in control 
 of the government. IN'ay, Blower, it is not, and it 
 never can be, true that the spurious vote, the cor- 
 rupted ballot, the debased verdict of a people, can con- 
 stitute any better title to authority than the violent 
 usurpation of a crown, or the enforced assent of Lords 
 and Commons. The oath of ofiice taken on the east 
 porch of the Capitol, in full view of applauding thou- 
 sands, no more confers the right to exercise the execu- 
 tive functions of the government than the assumption 
 of the crown of England in Westminster Hall b}^ force 
 of arms, establishes the rightful succession to the 
 throne of Britain. '' Freedom and the right " cannot 
 thus easily be thwarted. The sovereign's right cannot 
 be divested by the abuse of legal forms. The Presi- 
 dent who OAves his election to fraud may sit undis- 
 turbed in the seat of power, but he is none the less a 
 usurper whose rule is based on the ravished rights — 
 
THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 51 
 
 not of a competitor — but of many thousands of his 
 fellows, the collective sovereigns of the republic. 
 
 I believe these things, Blower. I do not doubt that 
 this man wearing the title and exercising the preroga- 
 tives of the President does so by virtue of a violent, 
 unlawful and premeditated disregard of the sovereign 
 rights of a majority of the voters of at least five states 
 of the Union, and a consequent debasement and defi- 
 ance of the sovereign right of every other citizen of 
 the republic. His rule is not " of the people nor by the 
 people," yet let us pray God that it be "for the people." 
 
 The right of the usuper, the just and reasonable 
 privilege of the de facto sovereign is, that he shall be 
 recognized and supported by all good subjects of the 
 realm, save only when he comes in conflict with rightful 
 authority. This rule is based upon the public good, 
 Avhich can only be subserved by the recognition of 
 some dominant authority. It is analogous to the rule 
 of private right which vests in the possessor a title 
 good against all the world, saving only the owner. 
 The President who went to Gettysburg yesterday is 
 one who, with all the forms of law, but with a fraudu- 
 lent title, entered upon a demesne of which he is enti- 
 tled to hold possession until he is ousted by one, not 
 merely armed Avith formal power, but having also 
 indubitable title. 
 
 As good citizens, therefore, as those who desire the 
 welfare of our land, and believe to-day as earnestly as 
 we did yesterda}^, in " the freedom and the right " for 
 which we fought, and for which so many of our com- 
 rades fell, it behooves us heartily and earnestly to 
 
52 THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 
 
 desire — not the success of this administration, whereby 
 wrong should triumph and evil be established — not the 
 perpetuation of wrongful authority in derogation of 
 that freedom which poor Joe died to establish — but 
 that the public weal may be subserved, and the years 
 of ravished power be made a fruitful fallow wherein 
 the right shall grow deep-rooted for to-morrow's har- 
 vest. 
 
 Why should this man go to Gettysburg ? Because 
 there was told most forcibly the lesson he most needs 
 to learn. Because there, upon its eighty-seventh birth- 
 day, the nation reasserted the immortal principle which 
 made its origin significant and has rendered its life 
 glorious. Because fifteen thousand heroes who gave 
 their lives for " freedom and the right," sealing with 
 their blood the initial declaration of our national exist- 
 ence, sleep peacefully upon the battle-scarred crest. 
 Because here the contest waxed hottest between those 
 who stood for '' freedom and the right " and a power 
 based on the denial of a people's right as its corner- 
 stone. Because here the arrogant claim of the white 
 man to the dominion of the south, which is all that the 
 President rightfully represents to-day, received its first 
 and most terrible rebuke ! 
 
 Why should he go to Gettysburg? Because that 
 day of days which its green slopes will forever com- 
 memorate should never be forgotten ! Because every 
 patriot's love for " freedom and the right " should be 
 strengthened and refined by recalling those July days 
 when the wheat-clad hills lost their golden gleam and 
 took instead the crimson hue of patriots' blood! 
 
THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 53 
 
 Because here the most illustrious of all his predecessors 
 gave utterance to the grandest burst of patriotic 
 eloquence that ever fell from human lips — an effort of 
 genius as immortal and resplendent as the devotion it 
 commemorates. Because that peerless patriot of our 
 history, that grandest hero of an heroic age, enjoined 
 all those to whom his words might come, '^ from these 
 honored dead to take increased devotion to the cause 
 for which they died." Because these hills are yet red- 
 olent with his presence, whose last solemn words to his 
 countrj^men were of ''the mystic cords of memory 
 stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave." 
 Because Gettysburg marks the climax of J^ational 
 peril and Confederate hope. Because it testifies forever 
 of the most glorious anniversary that ever marked a 
 nation's growth, of that eighty-seventh birthday which 
 saw a shattered enemy beaten back from these ensan- 
 guined slopes, the imperiled capital relieved, and the trust 
 of him who spoke freedom to the slave and appealed to 
 the God of battles in their behalf, marvelously justified. 
 The day that saw our banner everywhere victorious — 
 Lee forced back to the Potomac ; Bragg fleeing before 
 our exulting legions ; while in the self -same hour came 
 up from the sweltering Southland the tidings of Yicks- 
 burg prostrate at the feet of Grant ! A great army 
 made to pass under the yoke ! The stars and stripes 
 waving over the Southern Gibraltar ! The Mississippi 
 flowing "unvexed to the sea!" 
 
 Truly where such lessons of liberty may be learned 
 a President who uses the power of his high office to 
 manifest his personal indorsement of, and sympathy 
 
54: THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 
 
 with, those who, both in theory and practice, deny and 
 subvert the rights of man, ought surely to go and con 
 them carefully ! 
 
 Why should Grover Cleveland visit Gettysburg? 
 Because the hero-prophet and noblest martyr of lil)- 
 erty, Abraham Lincoln, in words of undying eloquence, 
 declared it to be holy ground, dedicated to liberty by 
 the blood of the free, so that by its touch the patriot 
 should f orevermore be consecrated anew to the struggle 
 for "freedom and the right," and be irresistibly im- 
 pelled by the noble example it commemorates " once 
 more highly to resolve that a government of the people 
 and hy the p>eopleJ^ as well as " for the people, shall not 
 perish from the earth," 
 
 Ah, Blower, I did hope that the President's first 
 sight of a battle-field, even though clad, as it must have 
 been, in the soft verdure of spring time, resting calmly 
 in the sunshine of peace, yet rich with historic monu- 
 ments, populous with scarred veterans, and teeming 
 with patriotic memories, might have overcome even 
 his indifference to the cause which triumphed there, 
 broken down the barriers of his self-devotion and 
 given the world one burst of patriotic aspiration from 
 his lips ! 
 
 Why did I weep ? It is well the ashes in thy 
 scarred and blackened bowl have groAvn dull and cold 
 Avhiie I have talked of these old days — the days when 
 you first rested on my heart in the bivouac above the 
 bayou — of the triumphs which we shared, but for 
 which Joe died. Let me read a little of that quarter 
 of a column, which is enough, and more than enough, 
 
THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 65 
 
 to detail the visit of the nation's executive head to the 
 most notable and glorious of the Nation's battle-fields : 
 
 " The President made it a condition of his attendance 
 that he should not he asked to speak.^^ 
 
 Why did he appeal to silence \ Did a past, barren 
 of patriotic ardor, paralyze his tongue, or did his pres- 
 ent honors, based upon the same disregard of human 
 right on which the Confederacy rested its appeal to 
 arms, make him court the refuge of the wary and 
 shield of the malfeasor ? 
 
 " The President loas driven from ])oint to point ahoict 
 ■thefield^ and the movements of the three historic days 
 fully explained to him. He made no remarks^ and 
 asked no questions.'''' 
 
 This Avas the President of the United States, 
 Blower, upon the field which marked the turning of 
 the tide that swept rebellion from the land. "He 
 made n(f remarks." Can it be he had no thoughts, 
 either, Blower ? Did they show him where Stannard's 
 terribly smitten lines were drawn, and tell him how 
 the raw Green Mountain boys, hardly a month from 
 their fair Ncav England homes, met the scath of shot 
 and shell as if war had been their boyhood's pastime ? 
 If they did. Blower, do you suppose he remembered 
 how " within a month — a little month," he had insulted 
 every one of those Vermont ers, sleeping in the bloody 
 graves upon the crest their pi]ed-up corpses held at 
 last, by sending as the nation's representative to the 
 Court of St. James the one man in all that green- 
 hilled, liberty-loving state, who dared to mock at their 
 heroism and sneer at the patient, sad-faced leader who 
 
56 THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 
 
 staked all for " freedom and the right," and in humble 
 self-forgetfulness ascribed all the glory to those who 
 fought and to whose heroism he appealed for aid? 
 Did he think what this '' dear dead dust on freedom's 
 proudest shrine " would say could it but make the soft 
 May wind its servitor ? Did he think what these dead 
 whom Lincoln so devoutly honored, would say if they 
 but knew that one of his successors had preferred the 
 worst of their native state's few malcontents above 
 the whole host of its heroes — their surviving com- 
 rades ? 
 
 Did they show him where Lawton's Georgians 
 fought, and did he remember the words which this 
 man — another of those he has just chosen to represent 
 the nation abroad — had lately addressed to himself ? — 
 " I have nothing to repent of, or apologize for, in con- 
 nection with the Confederate cause." Ah, if he had 
 repented, how gladly would the nation forgi\^ ! But 
 what must be the President's reflections who among 
 the dead of Gettysburg reflected that he had selected 
 as the recipient of her highest honors, the plenary de- 
 positary of her power and dignity, one who yet boasts 
 that he neither repents having sought to destroy the 
 Nation's life nor regrets the slaughter which resulted 
 from this attempt to overthrow '^freedom and the 
 right " and establish slavery and the wrong. It is not 
 the fact that he was a rebel — not the fact that he was 
 a valorous enemy — that makes him unfit for such pre- 
 ferment now, but the fact that he still glories in what 
 he did, and repents not of what he would have done. 
 
 But the worst is yet to come, Blower. The report 
 
THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 57 
 
 which was heralded to the land this morning declares 
 that 
 
 " The President seemed indifferent and somewhat 
 hored ! " 
 
 This w^as our President, Blower, upon the greatest 
 battle-field of a four years' war 1 The president was 
 ^'hored^^ by the very sight of their graves but for 
 whose heroism the nation which he now rules would 
 have been swept from the face of the earth ! Is it any 
 wonder that I wept as I read. 
 
 May 13, 1885. 
 
OUE MAY DAYS. 
 
 THE sweet May days have come again, Blower, 
 and the fragrance of the apple-blossoms is on the 
 morning air. The Veteran's heart is tender, for the 
 season brings up memories laden with mingled joy and 
 woe. His thoughts will go back to his own May — the 
 balmiest season of young life. Again he walks in the 
 brooding, vernal noontide beneath the dear old or- 
 chard's overhanging boughs. The ancient trees that 
 had stood in serried ranks like gray-clad soldiers, stub- 
 bornly repulsing winter's fierce assaults for half a hun- 
 dred years, had donned the garments of recurrent 
 victory, and every scraggly head was hidden by an 
 alabaster crown of gladness, just tinged with the faint 
 blush which summer's ardor gives the opening flower. 
 The soft, green leaves that creep between the crowding 
 blossoms onl}^ serve to enhance their loveliness, and 
 make the snowy windrows that stretch down the 
 southward trending slope, seem more dense and bil- 
 lowy when viewed from without. Under the trees the 
 earth is carpeted with soft, spring verdure flecked with 
 fallen petals. The sunshine comes but dimly through 
 the screen of flowers and leaves. The bees hum 
 drowsily about In the translucent waves of white and 
 green. The birds twitter peacefully, or sing fervidly, 
 flashing in and out among the tender filigree of the 
 leafy arches. The upgrown hedgerows by the gray 
 
 08 
 
THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 59 
 
 old wall shut out the world. The fragrant canopy 
 above excludes the sky save only where the azure 
 shows through the silver-bordered rifts, or where the 
 sun peeps through the wind-stirred leaves to note the 
 s^ambols of the birds or watch the wanderino-s of the 
 lovers underneath. Had ever love so fair a bower? 
 Cushioned and carpeted with verdure ! Eadiant with 
 light as warm and tender as that which fills the 
 pearly shell seen through the emerald wave ! Over- 
 hung with a waving canopy upborne by pillars gnarled 
 and gray, whose regularity made the silence seem the 
 work of grimly guarded necromants! Long, shaded 
 avenues, bordered b}^ snug nooks, where the bowed- 
 down branches almost met the grass, and offered that 
 half-seclusion in which coy love forever seeks to hide 
 the fond delights that need not to be hidden ! It was 
 nature's nuptial bower bedecked for the union of fond 
 hearts ! 
 
 Was ever soldier's lot so sweet! We were fiesh 
 from the battle-field, Blower, crowned with tlie gar- 
 lands of victory, and bearing welcome trophies. The 
 banners which our comrades had wrested from the foe 
 had been intrusted to our hands for presentation to 
 the authorities of our state. We had performed this 
 duty. Bronzed and rugged, and not wholly unscathed 
 by the hot breath of war, we had stood upon the his- 
 toric portico, told in a few simple words the story of 
 our comrades' heroism, and delivered into the hands of 
 the chief magistrate of the commonwealth the memen- 
 toes of their valor. We had listened to eloquent mes- 
 sages of congratulation which we were charged to bear 
 
60 THE VETEEAN AND HIS PIPE. 
 
 back to them, and our brown cheeks had burned all 
 the ruddier because we knew the eye of love beheld 
 our triumph. But when it was all over, when the huz- 
 zas of the exultant multitude were hushed ; when the 
 captured banners were hung upon the wall, where they 
 now molder unheeded into dust ; when to pleasing 
 duty a pleasant er respite succeeded ; when I fled from 
 the crowded city and love welcomed me to this sweet 
 fane upon the quiet hillside, then indeed the soldier's 
 cup of joy was full. Under the scented canop}^ we 
 wandered hour by hour. The sunlight and the shadow 
 fought with trembling eagerness for mastery. Love's 
 loitering footsteps bent the springing spires and pressed 
 fresh fragrance from the fallen petals. The tresses 
 which the sunlight kissed to golden brown were pow- 
 dered with white flakes that the spring breezes loosened 
 from their cups. From without came the sounds of 
 peace and home — the cattle lowing in the fields, the 
 lambs bleating on distant hillsides, the plowmen whist- 
 ling in the furrow. The incense rising from your 
 bowl, old friend, mingled with the aroma that freight- 
 ed the airs of this Eden. The cushioned turf was the 
 soldier's couch. Soft eyes showed the glint of tears as 
 he told of " war's alarms." 
 
 Ah, Blower, how bright the vision yet of the fair 
 form robed in spotless white which leaned against a 
 great gray trunk, her head crowned with a diadem of 
 pink and white, her eyes full of a divine pity, while her 
 hands scattered in trembling haste the ravished treas- 
 ures of the overburdened boughs. Was it any wonder, 
 Blower, that my lips forgot the tale of war and faltered 
 
THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 01 
 
 forth the tale of love ? Is it any wonder that we can 
 not forget ? How our hearts overleap the intervening 
 years ! The mists are gathering in the valleys, but the 
 heights are bathed in eternal sunlight. The years that 
 lie between may be forgotten, but there are pictures 
 in the past that will never grow dim. 
 
 To-day, when the children, fresh from tlieir lirst 
 flower-gathering holiday, burst into our dingy den, 
 laden with white, softly blushing blooms, to bring the 
 Veteran congratulations, his eyes were blinded to their 
 pretty faces and his ears were deaf to their kindly prat- 
 tle. He stood once more upon the sunlit hillside, with 
 the bees and birds and flowers above, the springing 
 clover underneath, and love and peace spread over all, 
 while in the background war stood grim and terrible. 
 God bless their sweet, bright faces and happy unwrung 
 hearts ! They called me back into the present. Blower, 
 with questions which I could not answer because of the 
 dear, dead faces that rose upon my sight and sealed 
 my lips with tender awe. I dreaded their curious ques- 
 tionings. Their wondering eyes had noted already 
 the dents in the crossed sabers, the heavy pistols, with 
 their muzzles holster-worn upon one side, grim old com- 
 panions of march and bivouac. They even spied your 
 curious case and asked the story of that comrade who 
 wrought so feebly many weary days to testify thereby 
 his love. I feared lest they might see the worn and 
 faded pouch that hangs beside it on the polished spikes 
 that once adorned the an tiered monarch's head, and ask 
 its story, too. I dreaded lest their eyes should spy a 
 trace of the device once wrought upon its surface and 
 
62 THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 
 
 ask me what it was. It may be invisible to others, 
 but to me it is still as clear and bright as when my eyes 
 first rested on the soft chenille and read the words, 
 '' Alice to John." 
 
 It was the first offering of that sweet May-day love. 
 How I laughed at the contrasted names, the one 
 wrought in bright and slender filaments and the other 
 done in colors dark and strong. Plow I sounded the 
 syllables — of the one soft and sweet as the murmur 
 of sinless souls by the river of life ; of the other 
 abrupt and harsh, as if all the possible mishaps 
 of life were not enough of ill for the rugged uncouth- 
 ness to which it was so fittingly applied. I have always 
 wondered. Blower, how "He who walked in Gallilee" 
 could have chosen as His '' beloved " disciple one whose 
 name • was John. So too I wonder — I have always 
 wondered — why that gentle spirit — But we must 
 not think of her. Blower. I drove the children away 
 Avith harsh tones and scowling looks to-day when they 
 pointed their chubby fingers at my treasure — my one 
 memento of that matchless May. God knows I would 
 not darken for one moment the sunshine of their young 
 lives — but — but — I can not tell them of our May and 
 the memories the apple-blossoms l)ring. 
 
 It was oiiY May, Blower. The years that since have 
 come have borne us ever farther and farther away from 
 the vernal sweetness of that time. The boys who 
 crowed and cackled in their mother's arms, while we 
 lay under the scarred oaks waiting the onset, in those 
 memorable days that followed hard upon the halcyon 
 hours of love — those boys are men to-day. Their votes 
 
 i 
 
THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 63 
 
 already suffice to choose the nation's rulers, and theu' 
 voices will soon sway the counsels of the nation. 
 
 We were at the front then, Blower, not merely in 
 a military sense, but in the front rank of the world- 
 life of that da}^ It was a marvelous day, too, lighted 
 with the glare of battle and filled with the fragrance 
 of self-sacrifice and devotion. "Was it greater, was it 
 better than the life of to-day ? Ah, who shall measure 
 them? Who shall compare the generation cradled 
 amid war's alarms with those who fought and died — 
 or still more difficult and delicate a task, those who 
 fought and lived ? 
 
 We are not the only ones, Blower, who feel that the 
 rush of years has borne us away from the time that 
 was our own. The years have not been so many, but 
 the days have been so big with destiny and the life 
 which has come on, so different from that which went 
 before, that the gulf between seems almost limitless. 
 Men in the prime of life are balancing up their books 
 as if age were at the threshold. Those who were not 
 screened by the happy fact of insignificance, as we 
 were, Blower, are now seeking, vainly enough, to 
 amend the record of their acts or turn public attention 
 away from what they did not do. Those who erred 
 bewail the cruel fate that will not let the memory of 
 evil die, and those who failed to uphold the right, 
 sneer at the instinct which demands the evidence of 
 patriotic impulse in that hour of peril, as the guarantee 
 of patriotic purpose in this halcyon day of peace. 
 They stoutly maintain that yesterday, with all its 
 good and evil, must be forgotten. That " freedon and 
 
64 THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 
 
 the right " are things of yesterday alone, and touch 
 not any life to-day. Wrong-doing, many would have 
 us believe, was absolved by ill-success; treason cured 
 by defeat, and the armed champions of slavery trans- 
 formed into knightly defenders of rights they still 
 deny. 
 
 It is a day of curious contrasts. Blower. The 
 leaders of the revolt are anxious only to excuse their 
 ill-success. One^ who laid down the sword which the 
 nation had intrusted him for its defense, and spurned 
 the honors which the country had bestowed upon him, 
 whines now for sympathy because his treason was not 
 richly enough rewarded, and while yet boasting the 
 righteousness of the cause he sacrificed a soldier's 
 honor to serve, is made the representative of a grateful 
 nation's power and preferred over thousands who 
 fouoht to save her from destruction. The world sees 
 and wonders. " To err is human ; to forgive, divine," 
 is so old an adage that mankind has learned to appre- 
 ciate at length its beauty and its truth. But what 
 shall be said of the new political creed which demands 
 reward but spurns pardon ; which boasts of evil-doing, 
 scorns the thought of repentance, yet imperiously 
 clamors for oblivion, and insists that courage, ability 
 and zeal in accomplishing evil yet unrepented of, shall 
 be accounted equally meritorious with the heroic main- 
 tenance of right ? 
 
 The sunlight of otir May has grown very dim, 
 
 *An article By Gen. Joseph E. Johnston, (C. S. A.) regretfully explain- 
 ing- the cause of Confederate failure after the first battle of Bull Run, was 
 queerly contemporaneous in its appearance with his appointment to his 
 present lucrative position in connection with the Pacific Railways. 
 
THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 65 
 
 Blower. The gleam of bayonets which marked' the 
 dividing line between right and wrong has been lost 
 in the gloom that overhangs a million graves. In our 
 anxiety to manifest our charity for those who sought 
 to destro}^, we have insulted the dead who died for us 
 by ignoring that for which they fought. We have 
 counted treason and patriotism synonymous in signifi- 
 cance and equal in merit. Not many months ago, one 
 stood under the flag unfurled above the Senate cham- 
 ber, and in words of boastful truculence declared that in 
 his hearing no man should attach the name of " traitor " 
 to the executive head of the Confederacy without sw4ft 
 rebuke. Instead of being a rebel, he declared that the 
 Confederate ex-President was a patriot whom history 
 would justify, and whom all the world would honor. 
 He knew, and the world knows, that the man he so 
 exultantly eulogized had used his position and influ- 
 ence as a Senator of the United States, not only to 
 encouratre and organize armed resistance and defiance 
 to national power, but Jit the last minute had with- 
 draAvn from her councils to assume the leadership of a 
 revolt, not aiming merely at a divided sovereignty; but 
 declaring itself the irreconcilable opponent of ''the 
 fundamentally wrong assumption of equality " on which 
 our government is founded, and announcing as its cor- 
 ner-stone ''the great truth that the negro is not equal 
 to the white man, and that subordination to the supe- 
 rior race is his natural and normal condition." For 
 this act and the blood spilled in the conflict, which he 
 spared no pains to promote, he has never expressed 
 one syllable of regret nor uttered one word of sorrow, 
 5 
 
Q6 THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 
 
 He has boasted rather of the blood . which stains his 
 hands, declaring it to have been shed in a holy cause. 
 This is the man whom a Senator of the United States 
 defied the world to stigmatize as a traitor ! This the 
 definition which a Senator of the United States applies 
 to patriotism ! 
 
 But this is not all. The Senator-^ himself was the 
 willing representative of open and confessed wrong. 
 He stood within the Senate chamber, at that very mo- 
 ment, an acknowledged exponent of the principle on 
 which the Confederacy stood yesterday — the subordi- 
 nation of the black race to the white — the utter disre- 
 gard of human rights as an attribute of dusky -hued 
 humanity. Only by flagrant and outrageous violation 
 of national law and open defiance of the fundamental 
 princij^le on which the government is founded could 
 he have worn the robe of the Senator. Nay, worse 
 even than that, his credentials as such might fitly have 
 been written in the blood of free citizens of the Re- 
 public, slain while battling bravely for the rights of 
 the weak and poor — rights which the Nation in the 
 o'lorious exaltation of on?' May had bestowed with un- 
 bounded self-laudation and which the trustful recipients 
 foolishly su]:)posed the shadow of the flag would for- 
 ever protect. He stood in the Senate for usurpation, 
 violence, blood and fraud — for the right of one man to 
 
 *non L, Q. C. Lamar, late a Colonel in the Confederate array ; Senator of 
 the United States, by the grace of "Ritle Clubs" and the " Mississippi Plan," 
 until March fourth, 1885, and since that time Secretary of the Interior, by 
 virtue of appointment of G rover Cleveland, President. By a Confederate 
 ColonePs strange coincidence this sig'natui-e has become essential to the 
 validity of every pension granted for service In the Union army. 
 
THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 67 
 
 control another — for slavery in defiance of law — even 
 as the Confederacy had stood upon the field of battle 
 for slavery sanctioned by statutory form. 
 
 The nation saw and knew all this, but dared not 
 protest lest it should be accused of having compassion 
 for the weak rather than charity for the strong. But 
 the tragedy was not complete until the nation, long 
 deaf to the holiest pledges which a free people can give 
 in vindication of their freedom, had bestowed on 
 usurpation and outrage the seal of its approval. That 
 time has come. The chosen representative of the life 
 and thought of to-day — the executive head of the na- 
 tion — made such by the fraudulent repression of rights 
 bestowed in fulfillment of vows to the Most Higli and 
 sealed by the blood of thousands, freely shed m the 
 golden moments of oior May — for that freedom which 
 is the essence of all right, this man. Blower, in the exer- 
 cise of this usurped power, constituted this very Senator 
 who 3^et boasted of treason, and stood as the confessed 
 exponent of violated right, one of the chief coadjutors of 
 his power, an exponent of his will and representative 
 of his authority ! Is it any wonder. Blower, that one 
 of the first acts of such an one, throusrh whose advance- 
 ment usurpation, violence, and fraud had been not 
 merely condoned but distinctly and unmistakably ap- 
 proved, should be to put the flag of the nation at half- 
 mast upon the public building under his control, in 
 honor of one who had laid down the duties of his hig-h 
 office in order to become the inciter of unlawful vio- 
 lence in an enemy's country — the self-confessed em- 
 ployer and re warder of assassins and incendiaries — a 
 
68 THE VETEEAN AND HIS PIPE. 
 
 man whose only objection to a proposal for the destruc- 
 tion of a great city by the stealthy introduction of 
 Greek fire by incendiaries animated by greed and love' 
 for plunder Avas that it was not a sufficiently certain 
 agent of wholesale destruction ! 
 
 Truly, Blower, to-day is far enough from our victo- 
 rious May ! It is well to leave the captured flags to 
 rot, or, better still, to doom them to swifter destruc-- 
 tion, lest they soon become reproachful badges of our 
 shame ! It is said, Blower, that this man, the head of 
 the Department of the Interior, is a cultured, amiable 
 Christian gentleman. Pie is said to be so fond of clas- 
 sical lore that he aspires to give a new and better Eng- 
 lish dress to those Theban odes in Avliich the wisdom 
 and patriotism of the ancients were enshrined. Be- 
 cause of these gentle qualities, we are told that it is 
 little less than an outrage to impute to him anything but 
 the most delicate and chivalrous sense of patriotic duty. 
 All this may be true. Blower. He may read Pindar 
 as glibly as a school-boy tells his task, and say his 
 prayers as regularly as El Mahdi, yet, I must still aver, 
 Blower, that in our May no man would have been 
 deemed worthy of national approval who had been a 
 party to the debasement of the freeman's right, or who 
 made himself the voluntary champion of unrepentant 
 assailants of the nation's life ; neither would the viola- 
 tor of law and one who denied the right of a whole 
 people to a share in self-government have been deemed 
 a worthy instrument to administer the laws or uphold 
 t^e dignity of a republic based on equal rights to all 
 men. Our May is very far away, Blower. To-day 
 
THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 69 
 
 has forgotten its lessons, but to-morrow will learn its 
 truths anew. 
 May 19, 1886. 
 
"MEMOEIAL^^ DAY. 
 
 THIS is the new name, Blower, for the " festival of 
 flowers" we have been won't to celebrate upon 
 this 30tli of May. At first we called it *' Decoration 
 Day." By that name it is designated in the statutes 
 of those states which have made it a legal holiday, or 
 otherwise given its observance legal recognition. For 
 a decade and a half the heart of the nation, still warm 
 with that patriotic ardor which inspired the soldiers of 
 the Republic, paid homage to their valor and celebra- 
 ted the triumph of the cause for which they fought, by 
 this annual festival of flowers, and because of its tri- 
 umphant and exultant character dominated it Decora- 
 tion Day. The graves of departed veterans were 
 heaped Avith the garlands of victory, symbolical both 
 of grateful remembrance and patriotic rejoicing. It 
 was a day of jubilee, on which the hero-dead were re- 
 membered with tenderness and their achievements with 
 exultation. Such it is still for us. Blower, and forever 
 shall be. We loved our comrades. We can never for- 
 get their virtues, and would not deserve to be remem- 
 bered in our extremest hour if we should ever cease to 
 honor their devotion. 
 
 But we can not wear the garb of woe, nor march 
 behind a draped and trailing banner on this day. The 
 comrades whom we loved may not be honored in sack- 
 cloth. The shrieking pipes that wail the dead do not 
 
 70 
 
THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 71 
 
 fitly express a ransomed nation's loving remembrance 
 of their deeds. The soldier is most honored by the 
 story of his exploits, and the patriot best remembered 
 by emulation of his self-sacrifice. To dwell upon the 
 hero's sufferings and ignore the motive which inspired 
 his acts is to degrade him to the level of the merce- 
 nary. Fame dwells in purpose as well as in achievement. 
 Fortitude is sanctified only by its aim. Privation is 
 merely pitiful, unless endured for a noble end. Mourn- 
 ing ill-befits the memory of one who suffered bravely 
 in a noble cause, which through his fortitude and valor 
 has been crowned with victory. Poor Joe would count 
 his love but ill-requited, Blower, should we go and 
 mourn above his grave for the life cut off in the prom- 
 ise of its springtide strength and beauty. His grieved 
 spirit would overwhelm us with keen reproaches, should 
 he behold us sorrowing still for the life he gladly 
 offered up for '' freedom and the right." Ah, Blower, 
 we know what he would say : 
 
 "Has the cause for which I died become so des- 
 picable," he would be sure to ask, " that my country 
 recalls its triumph with sadness, and remembers the 
 devotion of her sons with sorrow? Am I accounted 
 so unfortunate in having died for liberty that the 
 banner of the free is draped, and the drum's exultant 
 throbbings muffled on the one day when the nation 
 calls my sacrifice to mind? Then, indeed, was my 
 devotion folly and my suffering vain ! " 
 
 For such comrades, Blower, I dare not weep. Tears 
 may well fall upon the patriot's bier, but he who 
 mourns above his verdant grave when the cause for 
 
72 THE VETERAN AND HIS FIFE. 
 
 which he fell has proved triumphant, offers insult to 
 his memory. Yet our comrades of the ever-lessening 
 Grand Army of survivors of that great struggle, in 
 General Encampment assembled, have decided that the 
 instinct of patriotism which by common consent hal- 
 lowed that day when we first laid the wreaths of vic- 
 tory on the graves of our patriot dead, as " Decora- 
 tion Day, and provided for its future observance as a 
 day of jubilant remembrance of victory and deliver- 
 ance, was for once at fault. So they have solemnly de- 
 creed that henceforth it shall not be called " Decora- 
 tion Day," nor kept as a festival of rejoicing, but 
 shall be denominated '' Memorial Day," and be ob- 
 served as a day of mourning for our patriot dead. 
 
 Oh ! shameful mockery of a noble impulse ! As 
 well celebrate the Savior's birth in sackcloth ; pipe a 
 funeral march before a marriage train; or require sur- 
 viving veterans to wear convict stripes and march in 
 lockstep, as to prescribe mourning emblems for this 
 day. What have we to do with sorrow ? Yictors ex- 
 ult ! They who celebrate deliv^erance from evil, re- 
 joice ! Do we mourn our hero-dead ? Then indeed are 
 we unworthy of the devotion they displayed. 
 
 Two days in all the busy year our nation claims to 
 celebrate in commemoration of the most notable events 
 in its history. One also it has consecrated to the mem- 
 ory of its first great patriot — not choosing to mourn 
 forever for his death — " seeking his noble father in the 
 dust " — but electing rather to exult in the good fortune 
 that gave to us the name of Washington as an eternal 
 heritage of fame. The first of these American hpli- 
 
THE VETERAN AND HIS FIFE. 73 
 
 days marks the anniversary of our first assertion of 
 national autonomy, made famous and immortal by the 
 formulation of individual right on which it was predi- 
 cated. The valor of our fathers made good the boast- 
 ful declaration. We celebrate the fact with gay mu- 
 sic, flaunting banners, and universal acclaim. We re- 
 count their heroism, not with tears, but with rejoicing. 
 We do not mourn for those who fell, but exult in the 
 sacrifice that purchased victory. To have perished in 
 that struggle is the proudest inheritance a man of that 
 day could leave to his children. How well we re- 
 member the story. Blower, which has come down from 
 sire to son, of one who, ordered to " limber away," 
 refused to leave the rocky path by which his guns were 
 posted while he could hold the enemy in check. The 
 commander-in-chief wrote himself to the young wife, 
 whose tears fell upon the face of her first-born as she 
 read his words: "-Your husband's valor saved the 
 army from destruction." Save this memory the young 
 artilleryman left nothing for his child beyond a nation's 
 flattering promises, which were forgotten in the very 
 hour of utterance. But that faded scrap of paper is 
 a precious legacy to hundreds who bear his name, and 
 exult in the priceless boon of heroic blood. The story 
 of toil and suffering is but the dark background against 
 which valor and victory shine out the brighter. 
 
 Our other national feast was designed to celebrate 
 the preservation of the nationality our fathers estab- 
 lished, and the extension and universal application of 
 that principle for which they gladly staked " life, for- 
 tune, and their sacred honor." As an Qvent of history, 
 
74: THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 
 
 it as far outshines the other as the nation of to-day ex- 
 cels the meager colonies of a hundred years ao^o in 
 grandeur and prosperity. Our fathers formulated a 
 new theory of government, of which they themselves 
 took advantage, and to which they appealed in justifica- 
 tion of the act of rebellion. Our comrades, accepting 
 this doctrine and inspired by its spirit, overthrew armed 
 revolt against it, gave liberty and equality of right, to 
 millions of a race our fathers had despised too heartily 
 to heed their prayer — did what they had left undone, 
 and transformed their boastful declaration into accom- 
 plished fact. Shall we mourn for these men, who were 
 our comrades, while we exult in the devotion of our 
 fathers' fathers ? 
 
 No, Blower; never shall it be said that we wore the 
 garb of mourning on that day when the achievements 
 of our comrades are commemorated. The moments 
 dedicated to their memory shall be full of gladness. 
 "When we wore the blue in the day of battle, we obeyed 
 orders as a good soldier. In that Grand Army which 
 still survives we are glad always to obey any reason- 
 able requirement, and manifest due subordination to 
 constituted authority. But there is a "higher law" 
 than the edict of a General Encampment, a more 
 potent authority than a Grand Commander's order. 
 The dead whom we profess to honor have authority 
 above all who live, to forbid dishonor to their memory. 
 Our anniversary, Blower, shall be one of gladness 
 and exultation. We will remember the old days ; sing 
 the old songs ; fly our battle-scarred banner from the 
 peak, and strew the flowers that speak of victory and 
 
THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. Y5 
 
 rejoicing on the graves of those whose memory we 
 revere. It shall still be "Decoration Day" in our 
 hearts; and gratitude for a nation preserved and dedi- 
 cated anew to '' Freedom and the Eight " shall be the 
 theme of our exultant meditations. 
 
 Why was our glorious anniversary abolished? 
 Why were the waving flags bound with dolorous 
 drapery, and the veterans on this one day of their 
 public appearance greeted with wailing dirges and 
 escorted with funereal ceremonies to their comrades' 
 verdant graves ? Has the J^ation ceased to rejoice in 
 its deliverance? Has the birthright of liberty become 
 a thing of shame ? Do we mourn because our fathers' 
 boastful declaration has been made a fact and Ava^ought 
 into the warp of our national life ? 
 
 Ah, Blower it is a curious tale. They who meet on 
 the anniversary of " Stonewall " Jackson's death, to do 
 honor to the dead heroes of a " lost cause," most appro- 
 priately christened that sorrowful occasion " Memorial 
 Day." The sentiment of joy could constitute no ele- 
 ment of its observance. Their dead had died in vain. 
 The cause for which they fought Avas lost, and the ban- 
 ner which had floated above tlieir ranks was swept into 
 oblivion. Tlieir hope was inurned Avith their heroes. 
 The nationality tliey had sought to establish had van- 
 ished like a dream. The luster of their heroes's fame 
 must be dimmed forever by the memory of hopeless 
 disaster and incurable AA^rong. 
 
 It Avas not Lee alone Avho surrendered at Appomat- 
 tox. When the Confederacy yielded up its life, they 
 who had upborne its banner in those terrible years. 
 
76 THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 
 
 were compelled also formally to renounce the principle 
 on which it was based. What its eloquent Yice-Presi- 
 dent had denominated "the great truth" on which it 
 rested "as a corner-stone, the subordination of the 
 black race to the white" — the right to enslave, for 
 which so many had loyally and bravely died — those 
 who remained were compelled by overmastering odds 
 to yield. They who fought for the freedom of all, and 
 equality of rights for all, Avere victorious ; while they 
 Avho had made appeal to God by the device upon their 
 battle flag to maintain and defend the sanctity and 
 justness of slavery, suffered defeat. Through all the 
 years that are to come these men must bear the stigma, 
 not merely of defeat, but of a cause inherently wrong. 
 Their heroism and the sincerity of their conviction may, 
 in part, redeem their fame, but at the best it must ever be 
 held to have been wasted heroism — mistaken sincerity. 
 The world may admire and pity, but it can never 
 applaud. Their courage and fortitude are a part of the 
 world's inheritance: but those who love "freedom and 
 the right," in all the ages, must ever be grateful for the 
 final overthrow of the cause their valor and their 
 genius so long upheld. 
 
 The highest fame which it is possible for the 
 Confederate hero to attain must ever be tainted with 
 excuse and apology. Of their dead it must ever be 
 said, as in extenuation of a fault, "They thought 
 they were right." Beyond that the most daring 
 eulogium can not go. They were brave and earnest, 
 but misguided men. Their achievements were deeds 
 of marvelous valor, but the hope of liberty depended 
 
THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 77 
 
 on their discomfiture. Sad beyond the power of words 
 to depict, is the story of their devotion and their over- 
 throw. Sadder still, the fact that in history they will 
 only be remembered as the last of that brave array of 
 champions who, in the jarring cycles of the past, have 
 fought and died in defense of slavery — rendering up 
 their lives for the fancied right of oppressing their fel- 
 lows. Well is the day Avhich is consecrated to their 
 memory termed a "Memorial Day" — a day full of 
 mournful memories and bhghted hopes. For those who 
 mourn these dead heroes and this ill-fated cause, the 
 present brings only the bitterness of regret, and the 
 future offers no consoling hope of an ultimate reha- 
 bilitation of their fame. To them, time is but a via 
 dolorosa^ whose ever-deepening gloom must rest more 
 densely on the fame of those they loved, -as their excuse 
 grows year by year less plausible, and the cause for 
 which they fought grows more and more odious to 
 free-born millions, to whose thought slavery will be 
 only a horrid nightmare of an uncomprehended past. 
 
 Why was our glorious holiday, commemorative of 
 victory rather than defeat, of glad deliverance rather 
 than of hopeless overthrow, 'of triumphant battle for 
 the right rather than of desperate struggle for the 
 wrong, — why was that anniversary of gladness sought 
 to be assimilated in name and manner of observance to 
 this sorrowful memento of humiliation and disaster 1 
 
 Ah, Blower, it is a sad story of human weakness. 
 Strange as it may seem, there were those, even among 
 our comrades, who, for a little cheap laudation, in silly 
 deference to a sickly sentimentality, were willing to 
 
78 THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 
 
 abase themselves and strip their dead comrades of the 
 white cerements in which they peacefully and gloriously 
 sleep. These men thought that the difference between 
 right and wrong, between devotion to liberty and the 
 defense of slavery, between equality of right for all 
 men and the right of the strong to oppress the weak — • 
 might be blotted out, and the Xation led to honor 
 alike the champion of the right and the upholder of the 
 w^rong. So they sought first to deprive the day of any 
 significance to the living. Only the manhood and 
 valor of the dead were to be commemorated. The 
 dead were to be mourned ; the cause for which they 
 died, forgotten. There was no other way by which 
 the desired object could be accomplished, and the future 
 taught to honor the soldier for his deeds, regardless of 
 his motive. 
 
 Of course, they to whom the years of conflict brought 
 only sorrow and humiliation could not make their anni- 
 versary a jubilation. They had no reason to rejoice. 
 Even those who felt they had been in the wrong could 
 not look back upon those years of havoc with feelings 
 of genuine gladness. If either festival was to suffer 
 change, it must be ours. So anxious were our brethren 
 to blot out all memory of difference, to put " the blue " 
 and ''the gray" upon the same level of commendation 
 and reverence in the eyes of posterity, that they deter- 
 mined that if our sometime foemen could not come up 
 to our plane of exultation we should go dowm to their 
 level of humiliation. It was a silly notion. As if the 
 facts of history could be changed by resolution ! Right 
 be made wrong, or jo}^ turned to sorrow, at the w411 of 
 
THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 79 
 
 a few sentimental enthusiasts! These men had, per- 
 haps, the right to renounce for themselves, the merit of 
 patriotic purpose, but they had no right to rob the 
 dead of that which alone makes their beds upon the 
 battle-field forever glorious. They would count poor 
 Joe's devotion to ''freedom and the right" as noth- 
 ing, Blower ; and call upon the country to remember 
 and reverence, not the patriot — but the soldier! They 
 would have us admit that the only memorable thing 
 about our dear, dead heroes was the fact that they 
 endured privation without murmuring, and faced death 
 without flinching. They would ignore what made 
 him worthy of remembrance, in order that they might 
 do equal honor to his enemy. They would (h'ag 
 the hero down from his high pinnacle of moral purpose, 
 and put him on the plane of the hired bravo who fights 
 because slaughter is his trade, and to whom tlie cause 
 remains indifferent. AYhat honor is it to say of a 
 man that he was brave ? The cur who lies upon the 
 mat at our feet merits the same commendation. Joe's 
 devotion was no such brutal instinct. His was the 
 glory of self sacrifice — the championship of right. His 
 memory can only be rightly lionored when tlie cause 
 for which he fell is exalted and the halo of victory cast 
 upon his tomb. 
 
 And they would do this. Blower — they would dese- 
 crate our festival of glory by clothing it in the garb of 
 woe, and degrade the Nation's rejoicing in her deliver- 
 ance from evil, into puerile pity for the dead, who were 
 glorified in dying — they would do all this in the name 
 of charity ! They would invoke that sweet sentiment 
 
80 THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 
 
 \ 
 
 which was the inspiration of Joe's hfe — that love for 
 tiie rights of others and chivah'ous devotion to the 
 cause of the weak and the oppressed, for which he hved 
 and died — as an excuse for stripping him of his one 
 claim to immortality ! 
 
 God forgive us, Blower, if, with Joe's name on our 
 lips and Joe's memory in our hearts, we should fail in 
 devotion to the thought for which his blood was shed ! 
 We have no malice toward our foes of yesterday. The 
 blood that stains the soil beneath our feet is too holy 
 to permit our hearts to cherish aught of anger, revenge, 
 or any form of uncharitable sentiment. . We admire 
 the courage, honor the fortitude, and respect the sin- 
 cerity, of those who stood over against us in the day of 
 conflict as much as even those who mourn in the shadow 
 of disappointment and defeat. We are glad that such 
 foemen were our brothers, and count our posterity 
 happy in their joint inheritance of fame. But while 
 we honor their valor and pity their misfortune we 
 regret also — alas, we must ever remember and ever 
 regret — their error ! We can not mourn for tlieir mis- 
 fortune or cease to rejoice in our victory. Even those 
 among them to whom the consciousness of error came 
 with the knowledge of defeat, can not but be grateful 
 for the disaster that brought humihation. 
 
 God pity us. Blower, but love and charity, however 
 sweet and fervent, cannot so gild the wrong as to make 
 it pass current among men as the right. There is not in 
 the lapse of years any merciful medicament that will 
 heal the fame of him who fought, however valorously 
 and sincerelv, for slaverv, and raise it to the level of 
 
THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 81 
 
 the humblest of those who fell in the cause of freedom. 
 This is the gulf that lies between Joe's fame and that 
 of the kindliest, noblest, truest of those with whom he 
 fought, and in resisting whose impetuous valor, he 
 died. Tears cannot obliterate it. Charity cannot 
 hide it. As long as men love freedom, they must ap- 
 plaud the act of the one and deplore the attempt of the 
 other. 
 
 For the one army of valorous dead let us hold 
 " memorial ! " services, solemn and sad, 3'^et tender and 
 sweet. Let us mourn their wasted manhood, and do 
 honor to their misguided valor. But for the others — 
 those who shed their blood for that charity which counts 
 the rights and liberties even of the weakest and humblest 
 of earth above life itself — let not only us and our com- 
 rades, but the nation redeemed from peril and shame, 
 and all the liberty-lovers of earth, forever hold them 
 in joyful remembrance ! When we shall cease to heap 
 their graves with flowers, let the garlands of fame grow 
 brighter as the blessings which their valor bought 
 grow richer with the coming years, making all future 
 time their endless " Decoration Day ! " 
 
 May 30, 1885. 
 
"ALAS! SWEET CHARITY." 
 
 'TTT'E are in the country, Blower, and have wan- 
 V V clered out into the old orchard where the sweet- 
 est memories of the past are embalmed in fragrance 
 and beauty, for an hour of self-communion. The trees 
 have grown older since our sweetest May-day beneath 
 their branches. The waving grace of the brown, lithe 
 limbs is gone. The great gnarled heads have grown 
 gray and stiff. The trunks are coarse and mossy, es- 
 pecially on the windward sides. Some are broken and 
 decayed. The woodpeckers have made their nests in 
 the shattered branches. There are great gaps in some 
 of the rows where the sunlight falls unhindered on the 
 sod. The fallen petals yet cover the ground like mimic 
 snow, but the beauty and the glory of the old orchard 
 are of yesterday, though its gnarled and scraggly limbs 
 yet bear sweet and wholesome fruit for the nourish- 
 ment of to-day. 
 
 Let us rest in the half shadow that lies about the 
 trunk of this old tree, whose broken boughs teach a 
 lesson of good works, while the fresh young shoots that 
 spring up from the rent limbs speak of courage in the face 
 of misfortune ; let us rest here in the very spot where 
 Ave first heard young love's sweet whispered w^ords, and 
 bring our thoughts to rigorous self-judgment. In the 
 light of the holiest memories of the past, let us ask 
 whether the heart that beats beneath the folded sleeve 
 
 82 
 
THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 83 
 
 is harsh ^nd unjust in its judgments of to-day. For 
 such is the charge that is made against us, Blower. It 
 is said that the visions Avhich I see in the perfumed 
 clouds that rise above thy polished bo\Yl, unlike them, 
 are not tinged with the azure hue of charity, or bor- 
 dered with a fleecy film that hides the outlines of all 
 things lying beyond their narrow circlet. On the con- 
 trary. Blower, it is claimed that for me, hateful memo- 
 ries gleam fierce and hot under the cold ashes of a 
 broken life, like the embers of thy heated bowl, and 
 are wakened to new life by angry inspiration. One 
 who may have met us manfully in the day of battle, 
 perhaps the very one to whom this empty sleeve is due, 
 asks with grieved sincerity, "is it not time that charity 
 hid the evils of the past, and 23ermitted only what was 
 good therein to be remembered 'i " 
 
 Are w^e uncharitable, Blower? Would we re- 
 member or induce another to remember what otig/it 
 to be forgotton? Is there in the heart that lies 
 beneath the folded sleeve one thought of rancor? 
 Would w^e ignore one element of yesterday that 
 ought to be remembered? Have we ever uttered 
 words of bitterness, or even of reproach, for those who 
 fought for the wrong? Have we ever failed to ac- 
 knowledge in them a valor equal, man for man, to 
 that of the comrades whom we love ? He who writes 
 reproachfully, demanding charity, says of himself 
 that he w^as "brought up under the withering, bhght- 
 ing curse of slavery," and because of this he says of 
 the Confederate cause : " I believed the7i that w^e were 
 right as firmly as I now believe that we were wrong." 
 
84 THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 
 
 Were we ever lacking in charity to one " brought 
 up under the withering curse of slavery," Blower? 
 Have we ever failed in due appreciation of those who 
 believed we were wrong as sincerely as Joe believed 
 that we were right, or in expressed commendation and 
 approval of one who makes himself doubly a hero by 
 declaring " that for which I fought, believing it right, 
 I now abhor, beheving it wrong? " 
 
 If so, we have done grievous wrong and hasten now 
 to make confession of our fault. We can hardly. say 
 we have forgiven those who fought against us, because, 
 even in the heat and fervor of the conflict, while we 
 stood in the liery crater of battle or witnessed the pit- 
 iful woes of the prison pen, we never once forgot how 
 the " blighting, withering curse of slavery" had distorted 
 noble lives ; and while we pitied greatly, Ave felt no ran- 
 cor. So, we are very sure, felt the great body of our 
 comrades. Before we first entered into battle our souls 
 had been shrived clean of hate. The mustering of the 
 freemen of the ISTorth was, indeed, a crusade for liberty. 
 A deep and fervid ecstacy underlay the whole movement 
 and gave it the character of a religious warfare as intense 
 and earnest as any which the past has witnessed ; but 
 differing from all other conflicts based upon divergence 
 of belief, in this one element — its force was directed 
 solely against the idea which it opposed, and not at all 
 against the individuals by whom the idea was upheld. 
 
 For the first time in the world's history, a genuine 
 religious zeal inspired embattled hosts arrayed in sup- 
 port of a specific dogma, almost without trace of en- 
 mity or aversion toward its defenders. The belief of 
 
THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 85 
 
 the North in the principles of human liberty and equal- 
 ity of right, was so fervent and sincere that it could not 
 conceive how one could honestly deny their truth, 
 unless brain and conscience had indeed been perverted 
 through "the blighting, withering curse of slavery." 
 Because we regarded the life and thought of the South 
 as the product and result of this curse, we counted 
 those honest and sincere who mustered in its defense 
 under the '■ stars and bars ; " and because we believed 
 in their sincerity we forgot their error, looking upon 
 them with pity only, and not with hate. In saying 
 this, Blower, I believe that I speak for all those who, 
 like poor Joe, fought for " freedom and the right." 
 The clash of arms, it is 1:rue, may have developed 
 sparks of fire. War is savagery, and pity flies af- 
 frighted from the battlefield. The hatred and the 
 fear of slavery's baneful influence steeled our hearts 
 for conquest. All that was needful for its overthrow 
 and annihilation we were willing to suffer and to do, 
 but we had no wish to punish. Devotedly as we loved 
 the riglit — or what we deemed the right — bitterly as we 
 hated the wrong — or what we deemed the wrong — we 
 wished only to establish, the one and not to punish or 
 despoil the upholders of the other. So we overthrew 
 and disarmed our foe, taking nothing from him that 
 was his, and bade him go in peace upon his promise of 
 good behavior only. This was not the act, of hate, nor 
 did it show a lack of charity. Blower. We believed 
 our enemies to be earnest and sincere in their belief, 
 but counted that belief dangerous to liberty. All we 
 sought to do, therefore, was to render them powerless 
 
86 THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 
 
 for harm, and render their belief innocuous for the 
 future. 
 
 We gave the slave his liberty, it is true, or rather 
 permitted him to resume what was his own by natural 
 and inalienable right; and gave to him the guaranty of a 
 constitutional provision that he should not be deprived 
 tliereof nor molested in the enjo3anent of the same. 
 We did not do this to injure the master, nor to take from 
 him what was his ; but because " the right " for w^liich 
 we fought forbade us to recognize property in man. 
 It was the master's mishap that loss accrued to him 
 thereby — the common misfortune that waits upon er- 
 roneous judgment. But for the wrongs of slavery we 
 exacted no penalty. Even for the slave's sake, we 
 took nothing from the master. Naked as he came into 
 the world, he entered also into the estate of freedom. 
 The tools with which he wrought, the very clothes 
 Avhicli hid his nakedness, the master was at liberty to 
 withhold from him. We did not eveu take out of the 
 master's granary corn for a single day's support of the 
 slave wdiose labor he had enjoyed for years without 
 recompense. We gave the slave his freedom, and al- 
 lowed the master to hold, unlessened by a single grain, 
 the product of his labor. We sought to cure the ill of 
 slavery; but did not seek to punish, even by the light- 
 est touch of power, the wrong of past enslavement or 
 compel atonement to be made for unrequited toiL This 
 was not the part of hate, Blow^er, nor does it argue any 
 lack of charity. 
 
 Perhaps it might have been more wisely done 
 in some of its details ; but never before in all the 
 
THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 87 
 
 world's history was the conqueror's will so lightly 
 tinged with harshness, or administered with such ten- 
 der care, not merely for the rights, but even for the 
 foibles and fancies of the subjugated. I^ay, we have 
 been so charitable that we have winked at crimes 
 which have put barbarism to the blush; and have al- 
 most forborne to blame, when the nation's pledges to 
 the liberated bondman have been rendered null by ran- 
 corous and organized opposition to the nation's will. 
 We have so trusted in the sincerity of our foemen and 
 believed in the potency of right to heal even "the blight- 
 ing curse of slavery," that we have Avaited patiently 
 and hopefully for words and works that should testify 
 recognition and acceptance, not merely of the physical 
 facts attending the overthrow of the Confederacy, but 
 also of the principle which underlay the suppression 
 of rebellion — the equal right of all men to the privil- 
 ege of self-government, on which the right to liberty in 
 its last analysis must ever rest. We have waited twen- 
 ty years for evidence of that true citizenship which is 
 jealous of the rights of every other citizen, only to see 
 the law of the land openly defied and seven millions of 
 citizens, to whom the nation had pledged its protection 
 in the exercise of a freeman's right, thrust without the 
 pale of sovereignty by force or fraud, and given only so 
 much of privilege as the master- race may see fit to al- 
 low. This is openly and boldly proclaimed, and the 
 rule of the majority, on which our liberties depend, 
 is boldly flouted by those who, in the same breath, plead 
 for charity and oblivion for the evil of the past. 
 
 Even then we have granted this prayer. Blower. 
 
88 THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 
 
 Such has been our tender consideration for our some- 
 time enemies, that we have turned a deaf ear to 
 the cries of our feeble aUies, have stood quietly by 
 while their rights were ravished from them, and per- 
 mitted the most valuable element of the liberty 
 we had won for them and guaranteed to them to be 
 wrested from their grasp, without interference; nay, 
 almost without protest. We have made ourselves false 
 to the nation's plighted honor in order to manifest our 
 charity. Such a course. Blower, is but a poor founda- 
 tion for the piteous whine for charity which every wind 
 that comes up from the South brings to ears that begin 
 to grow weary of its iteration. 
 
 Much has been said. Blower, and is said to-day, of the 
 injustice of having excluded a portion of the Southern 
 people for a short period from the privilege of partici- 
 pating in the control and direction of the government. 
 Less than one-fifth of the white population was thus 
 excluded by operation of law, and the memory of it, 
 even after the lapse of a decade and a half yet fills the 
 Southern heart with rage, and produces red-eyed par- 
 oxysms of threatening diatribe, of the same charac- 
 ter, and of like quality, with those wonderful efforts in 
 which slavery shrieked defiance to liberty and be- 
 wailed the lack of charity that questioned her right to 
 oppress. Yet this abnormal anger at the debarjnent 
 of a feio of their race, for a brief period, from the 
 right of suffrage, has not tended in the least degree, to 
 make them careful of the rights of others, but seems 
 instead to have stimulated in them an insane rage to 
 subvert the freedman's blood-bought and law-defined 
 
THE VETEKAN AND HIS PIPE. 89 
 
 privilege. But it is time, Blower, that the gloss of 
 sentnnentality was stripped from this threadbare plea 
 of wrong. It is not true that the J^ation took from any 
 man any right which he possessed ! 
 
 Only the other da}^ a petition was sent to the 
 President of the United States asking the pardon 
 of Jefferson Davis. Though framed in blissful igno- 
 rance of statutory enactments, it still proceeded on a 
 logical hypothesis in asserting that the late presi- 
 dent of the Confederacy was, in law and morals, 
 guilty of no graver an offense than other thousands, 
 all of whom had been forgiven and restored to all 
 the rights the citizen can have. Every citizen of the 
 United States who voluntarily aided the rebellion, 
 by that act, in equity as well as by law, lost all the 
 rights appertaining to such citizenship. It is a silly and 
 arrogant pretense that the rebel soldier, with the oath 
 of allegiance to the Confederacy yet warm upon his 
 lips, and the flag of rebellion flying above his head as 
 he charged the Union lines with determined purpose to 
 destroy, had somewhere hidden about his person — per- 
 haps wrapped about the " forty rounds " of death- 
 dealing cartridges he carried into action — the safeguard 
 and guaranty of American citizenship. Allegiance 
 has no such indestructible quality. 
 
 The man who calls upon God to witness his re- 
 nunciation of the old and his adoption of a new alle- 
 giance can never afterwards assert any plea of right 
 or privilege under the former. What comes to him 
 thereafter of consideration or privilege from the 
 government he has renounced must be of grace and 
 
90 THE VETERA.N AND HIS PIPE. 
 
 not of right. All that the government ever did 
 was to leave a small percentage of its armed and 
 organized enemies just where they had placed them- 
 selves. The}^ had called God to witness that they 
 were no longer citizens of the United States, and had 
 caused official record of this to be entered in the pub- 
 lic archives. Because four-fifths were pardoned out- 
 right, and the others left for a while upon probation, 
 the whole have raised the curious outcry of injustice 
 and oppression. 
 
 Even this last petitioner for the last unpardoned rebel 
 alleges, with apparent unconsciousness of its absurdity, 
 that others have been pardoned while he for whom he 
 asks rehabilitation has not, and that this withholding of 
 pardon for acts of the most flagrant and ensanguined 
 wrong, constitutes an injustice which is likely to bring 
 down the gray hairs of the aged patriot with sorrow to 
 the grave. What a refutation is this. Blower, of the oft- 
 repeated charge of a lack of charity and forbearance on 
 the part of the natic»n. No hangman was required when 
 our rebellion ended. No commissioners of confiscated 
 estates held crowded courts thereafter, as at the close 
 of our revolutionary war ; but at the end of twent}^ 
 years the head of one of the greatest rebellions the 
 world has ever known, the commander-in-chief of an 
 ,^rmy which it cost half a million lives to overthrow — 
 this man, by the mouth of ^ prochaine ami alleges as 
 his chiefest grievance, that our abounding morcy has 
 left him no companion in misfortune — that he is the 
 only man whose voluntary oath renouncing his alle- 
 giance has been allowed to stand unexpunged ! 
 
THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. ^ ,91 
 
 But he who Avrites the words which we have read 
 with solemn gladness, " I believed that we were right 
 then as thoroughly as I now believe that we were 
 wrong," by their very utterance has put himself be- 
 yond the pale of charity. Charity implies toleration, 
 forbearance, patience with those who persist in wrong- 
 thinking or wrong-doing. We cannot exercise charity 
 toward those whose acts we honor and applaud. 
 "Charity," we are told '^ covers a multitude of sins," but 
 it is repentance that lets fall the curtain of oblivion. 
 To have fought bravely for what he " believed to be 
 right," would of itself have entitled this " ex-Confeder- 
 ate " to that honorable regard which courage and sm- 
 cerity must always merit. Even to have submitted 
 honorably to defeat, though he had never come to be- 
 lieve the cause for which he fought to have been wrong, 
 or recognized the evil attending "the Avithering, blight- 
 ing curse of slavery," would have entitled him to that 
 charity which our comrades and the country ha\^e so 
 abundantly bestowed upon those who stood with him, 
 pari-delictors in the wrong which underlay that woful 
 strife. When he steps out of the ranks of those who 
 yielded their arms but did not surrender their opinions; 
 when he saj^s, " You were right and I was wrong," 
 there can be no more talk of Gharity. Such a declara- 
 tion is the substantial basis of reconciliation, amity, re- 
 established union. We extend to that man. Blower, 
 not the fig-leaf of charity, but the right hand of 
 friendship — the guaranty of a trust that no future 
 difference can for a moment weaken, much less destroy. 
 To him the error of the past has become a beacon to 
 
92 THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 
 
 warn from like error in the future. Realizing the na- 
 ture of that wrong which it required so much precious 
 blood to obliterate, he will naturally be very heedful 
 of human right hereafter. We do not know what his 
 political affiliations may be. If he means what he 
 says we hardly care. The destiny of the country, the 
 riD:hts and liberties of the humblest and the weakest, 
 are as safe in the hands of such a man as they would 
 have been in poor dear Joe's in that last hour of sweet 
 self-sacrifice. 
 
 Have I ever uttered a word or penned a line. 
 Blower, to imply distrust or encourage disparagement 
 of such men as he — twice-told heroes, who dared not 
 only to fight for what they believed to be right, but stand 
 forth afterward and confess that it was wrong 'i Xever, 
 Blower, never! In this sweet sanctuary of spotless 
 love, with the rustle of angel pinions on the incense- 
 freighted air, let me solemnly aver that never for one 
 moment had such thought lodgment in my heart! 
 On the contrary, my heartfelt sorrow and hottest, most 
 indignant scorn have ever been evoked by the fact 
 that our countrymen, sometimes even our comrades, 
 will draw no distinction between those who deplore the 
 wrong for which they fought, perceive " the blighting 
 curse "' which slavery was, and those who, unrepentant 
 of evil, still exult in the havoc which was wrought and 
 seek to perpetuate the wrong which Joe died to de- 
 stroy. The brave ma,n who repents can be trusted with 
 to-morrow's destiny ; but he who has learned nothing 
 by defeat ; he who boasts only of the prowess he dis- 
 played in the support of evil ; he who while clamoring 
 
THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 93 
 
 for charity for himself, can set his foot with ruthless 
 violence upon the rights of others ; he who will hold 
 and exercise authority secured by unlawful suppress- 
 ion of the will of a majority ; in short, all those 
 whose only claim to charit}^ is that they have sinned, 
 whose only guaranty of wisdom is that they counseled 
 evil and organized disaster, and whose only certificate 
 of patriotism is that they were valiant upholders of 
 oppression — these and every one of them. Blower, is a 
 far more dangerous enemy of liberty to-day than when 
 he stood among the hosts of treason over against us on 
 the battle-field, or sat in the councils of our confedera- 
 ted foes. The spirit that strips the freedman of his 
 rights to-day in defiance of the law, in purpose is not 
 less malign, and in its consequences is far more dan- 
 gerous, than that which yesterday used the forms of law 
 to debar the slave of his liberty. To give such men 
 charge of our national affairs is not less sacrilegious 
 than to intrust the Ark of the Covenant to the care of 
 uncleansed ITzzas. 
 
 While we would honor and trust the valiant soldier 
 who confesses that his cause was wrong ; while we even 
 regard with profound respect the hard-fibered veteran 
 who can not yet surrender the baleful dogmas of yes- 
 terday, we would no more think of intrusting the 
 slightest atom of national power to one who has no 
 regret for the part he took in promoting rebellion, and 
 who can see nothing wrong in the past except the 
 course of the government in suppressing the rebellion 
 and freeing the slave — I say, Blower, and I say it rev- 
 erently in this holiest of earthly tabernacles — I would 
 
94 THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 
 
 no sooner trust such a man with the lightest tittle of 
 national authority, than I would give a sleeping babe 
 to a murderer who laughingly boasted of infantile 
 slaughter he had wrought. Kight is right. Only fools 
 intrust precious things to those who make a boast of 
 evil-doing. It is a marvelously silly notion, Blower, 
 that the slave-master — he who fought and bled for the 
 right to oppress and still believes in the white man's 
 right to control the black — is, by these very facts, made 
 the fittest guardian of the freedman's liberty. It is only 
 when he sees the error of the past that he becomes wor- 
 thy to minister at freedom's shrine — a shrine which is 
 
 To be approached and touched with serious fear 
 With hands made pure and hearts of faith severe, 
 Like to the priesthood of the One Divine ! 
 
 June 6, 1885. 
 
PUEITAI^ OE CAVALIER. 
 
 IT is a curious thing, Blower, that our Southern 
 brethren should be so peculiarly sensitive about 
 what is said concerning themselves, or the ideas and 
 institutions of the South. One would suppose, from 
 the energy and persistency with which they assert 
 their individual and collective superiority over the 
 rest of mankind, that they would be entirely undis- 
 turbed by the opinions of those whom they profess to 
 esteem so lightly. Instead of this, however, we find 
 their ears always strained to catch the slightest mur- 
 mur of disparagement; and their suspicion even more 
 alert to imagine depreciation where none is intended. 
 One of these friends writes angrily of our remarks in 
 reference to " Stonewall " Jackson, asserting without 
 scruple that we -'praised Jackson in order to more ef- 
 fectually disparage Lee." 
 
 We had neither motive nor desire as he should have 
 seen, Blower, to lessen by so much as one pen-stroke 
 the just fame of the commander of the Army of E'orth- 
 ern Virginia. Even if we had the disposition we have 
 not the power to do so. The story of his life is written 
 in the history of that great day by his own hand. The 
 humble and comparatively unknown actors in the 
 world's great drama may perhaps be misunderstood or 
 misrepresented in history, but those who lead great 
 movements, by that very fact become their own biogra- 
 
 95 
 
96 THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 
 
 phers. All may not be apparent at a glance. Time 
 may be required to unravel some of the hieroglyphics ; 
 but the real history of a great life is always written 
 before its end is reached. This record every one has 
 the right to read and construe for himself. 
 
 But the jealousy of our Southern friends is as base- 
 less and absurd as their clamor for charity. The peo- 
 ple of the North — the upholders of national power in 
 the great conflict — have only little less, if indeed they 
 have any less, interest in the fair fame of the leaders 
 of the Confederate armies than the people of the South 
 themselves. They were types of American as well as of 
 merely Southern character. The foundations of their 
 excellence were laid broad and deep on the firm basis 
 of our national life. It was only the bias given to 
 their powers that was distinctively Southern. As 
 men they were the nation's children. Their glory 
 lives to adorn the nation's history. Their errors and 
 weaknesses are either buried in the pitiful tomb of a 
 lost cause or remain a heritage, shameful or reproach- 
 ful, as the case may be, of that civilization which not 
 only blighted noble lives but handicapped a whole peo- 
 ple in the race of progress. It is to the credit of our 
 American life that it produced such men as Lee 
 and Jackson; and to the everlasting discredit of South- 
 ern life and institutions that they cast upon such men, 
 the disadvantage and weighed down their fame with 
 the odium of a cause which must continue to grow 
 more reprehensible, if not even more detestable, with 
 the lapse of years. 
 
 So far as favor is concerned, Blower, there is per- 
 
THE VETEBAN AND HIS PIPE. 97 
 
 haps no reason why the supporter of the national cause 
 should incline to magnify the fame of Jackson rather 
 than that of Lee. In doing so, in truth, I only gave 
 utterance to that instinctive cry of the South in the 
 hour of her deepest humiliation : " If Stonewall " Jack- 
 son had only lived this thing would never have hap- 
 pened to us. " It is amazing how universal was this 
 sentiment. I venture to say, Blower, that we have 
 not a comrade who served for even a month in the sub- 
 jugated territory after Lee's surrender, who did not 
 hear it a thousand times, alike from those who fought 
 and those who watched, from old and young, from 
 male and female. That they are becoming jealous of 
 the fame of the chief when contrasted with that of the 
 subordinate may, perhaps, be an indication that the 
 sting of regret for what was not accomplished is giving 
 way to a curious exultation in what was actually 
 achieved. 
 
 We, who can have no such bias, Blower, may even 
 now hold the balance fairly between these, our great 
 foemen, and foretell with certainty the verdict of the 
 future on their merits. Both were men of whose fame 
 and achievements any people might well be proud. 
 Both were men of spotless personal character. Despite 
 the fine-spun ethical disquisitions by which it has re- 
 centl}- been attempted to distinguish between the offi- 
 cial and the private character of public men, we who 
 are of yesterday. Blower, must ever note as first among 
 the claims to renown the fact of personal purity. We re- 
 member with especial pride, therefore, that the great 
 names of our climacteric era, upon both sides of the 
 7 
 
98 THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 
 
 great controversy, were men against whose private 
 characters no word of reproach was ever truthfully ut- 
 tered. This first element of deserv^ed fame was sup- 
 plemented in both the characters under consideration 
 by intellectual and manly characteristics of the very 
 first order. The one was a most accomplished soldier 
 — a subtle and elusive strategist to whom war was a 
 game in which he was so conscious of his own excel- 
 lence that he was never quite able to eliminate himself 
 and his fame from the problem he was endeavoring to 
 solve. The other was a thunderbolt of war to whom 
 the end was everything. All that lay between him 
 and victory was unconsidered dust. He himself was 
 nothing to himself. He counted his fame of no more 
 value than his life, and staked both without a moment's 
 hesitation, whenever the aspect of the conflict seemed 
 to demand. The one had the misfortune to fall in a 
 subordinate position in which he had already outshone 
 his great chief. The other had the misfortune to live 
 after the close of a mighty conflict, in which he won 
 little honor and no victories after the fall of his great 
 subordinate. The one has had the greater measure of 
 adulation ; the other the still more flattering tribute of 
 having made his name a thing of terror to his enemies, 
 so that his simple presence was accounted by them the 
 sure presage of disaster. 
 
 It is folly. Blower, to suppose that any American 
 who has a spark of pride in his country's history does 
 not exult in the fame of such men as these. No one 
 doubts that the motives of both were patriotic, accord- 
 ing to their respective ideas of what constituted pa- 
 
THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. \)\) 
 
 triotism. The one was a theorist who sacrificed a well- 
 deservecl fame to tlie dogma of state rights. He be- 
 lieved that Virginia had a riglit to command his sword 
 and services. In obedience to her behest, from a fine 
 and pecuhar sense of honor, he sacrificed his own views 
 of poHcy — his own ideas of the ultimate good of the 
 whole country — and became the zealous instrument of 
 a popular impulse the wisdom of which he may at least 
 be said to have doubted. His conduct was animated 
 by a conviction that Yirginia had a right to secede, to 
 establish an independent government, or ally herself 
 with other political communities in a confederate na- 
 tionality, as she saw fit ; and that he, representing the 
 honor and dignity of the Lees and all their kindred, 
 was in duty bound to obey her mandate zealously and 
 faithfully, no matter what might be his individual be- 
 lief as to the consequences. It can hardly be shown 
 that he was at any time very sanguine of the result. 
 His religious instincts were strong, and his belief in 
 the abstract right of secession is unquestionable. The 
 confidence which he so often expressed in the divine 
 favor was no doubt based on this conviction as to the 
 right of Virginia, acting as an independent common- 
 wealth, to choose her own governmental form and po- 
 litical affiliations. Beyond this his confidence did not 
 go. There was, with him, no burning sense of injus- 
 tice done or threatened — no deep conviction of an un- 
 avoidable necessity — no profound belief that the pros- 
 perity, happiness, and ultimate destiny of a great peo- 
 ple demanded the establishment of the Confederacy 
 and the appeal to arms. It is even doubtful if he had 
 
100 THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 
 
 any definite liope of success until Jacl<:son's wonderful 
 campaign in the Yalley of the Shenandoah seemed 
 to give assurance of ultimate victory. The honor of 
 a great name and loyalty to Virginia were the motives 
 that inspired Eobert E. Lee. 
 
 These were noble and worthy motives, Blower, 
 alike honorable to the man and creditable to the peo- 
 ple of whom he was a part. IS'o base or sordid ambi- 
 tion and no taint of personal dishonor can be attributed 
 to him. He was a knightly and chivalrous champion of 
 a cause not only ill-starred, but based on evil purpose 
 and expressly designed to promote and perpetuate a 
 wrong. It was not a broad and generous devotion to 
 the principles of human freedoni, nor a consuming de- 
 sire for the good of his fellows that inspired his action, 
 but only a strained and fanciful sense of honor — the 
 noblesse oblige of a technical allegiance and an honored 
 name. 
 
 Far different was it with Jackson. He was a man 
 of a nobler, if not so romantic, a type. He had not 
 time to think of himself, and was not burdened with 
 any ancestral array whose ghostly mandates were 
 binding on his conscience. Practically, he was the 
 first of h'is line. His family, though honorable enough, 
 was humble, which, in the social organization of the 
 South, means more than can be well understood at the 
 !N^orth. Compared with Lee he was decidedly his 
 inferior in social rank. He was one of the tolerated 
 classes of that day at the South, who in effect sat 
 " below the salt." He was of the least esteemed of the 
 professions — a schoolmaster. His merits as a man and 
 
THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 101 
 
 an instructor had brought him a certain prestige. Lee 
 was born with the right to command ; Jackson had to 
 win it. Tlie haughtiest Virginian was proud to serve 
 under the aristocratic soldier, whose courtly manner 
 and distinguished descent gave him an admitted pre- 
 eminence among them. It was far otherAvise with the 
 scrubby, saturnine professor, who had no title to rank 
 among them except his technical knowledge and the 
 commission which he held. He was a commander, not 
 a leader. The rule which he established when he first 
 issued orders taking command at Harper's Ferry was 
 that of the soldier, not that of the man. Half of his 
 subordinates felt themselves his superior in everything 
 but military technique. He represented no social or 
 political leadership. The men who were called upon 
 to obey him felt humiliated rather than honored by his 
 preferment. " He was regarded as a very worthy per- 
 son," said a distinguished Southern gentleman, whose 
 relations with him up to that time were peculiarly 
 close, " but there was nothing in his social position, 
 family, or previous career, to give any promise of the 
 remarkable qualities he afterward displayed." The 
 words were spoken years after his death, and Jackson's 
 fame had in a peculiar manner reflected honor on the 
 man who uttered them, but the cool, even tone in 
 which they were spoken was not entirely devoid of the 
 idea of patronage even then. The fact is that Jackson 
 represented the type of Southern life which was dis- 
 tinctly considered not " the best." He was a good 
 enough man, a worthy person, a useful citizen ; but the 
 peculiar and indescribable flavor of Southern gentle- 
 
102 THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 
 
 manhood was hardly recognizable in his personality 
 until his sword had cut his way to the first rank among 
 the soldiers of his day. He had no prestige, no polit- 
 ical influence, no following. He had not even any con- 
 fidant, and is not known to have had any aspiration. 
 He had his sword, his brain, and an unwavering con- 
 viction. 
 
 This man had never any doubt. With rehgious 
 instincts even stronger than those of his superior, he 
 fought for a cause which he believed to be wholly and 
 divinely right. He believed that he saw the hand of 
 God in the great conflict, and gave himself to the 
 divine service as humbly and self-forgetfully on the 
 field of battle as in the performance of the peaceful 
 duties of the church, which he had thitherto discharged. 
 In his belief the appeal to arms w^as not made in sup- 
 port merely of a state's right to secede, but in assertion 
 of a nation's highest right and divinest privilege — in 
 support of a social order, established by the express 
 commandment, and perpetuated and maintained b}^ the 
 special favor and protection, of the Almighty. His 
 tender conscience cast a charm over an institution, 
 many of w^hose aspects were especially horrible and 
 degrading. To his stern but tender Christianity, 
 slavery represented, not only the Divine injunction, 
 but a burden of onerous duty. With him the patri- 
 archial theory w^hich was claimed as its philosophic 
 basis, was crystallized into rigorous but beautiful fact. 
 The " man-servant and the maid-servant " in his house- 
 hold were not simple instruments of avarice or luxury. 
 The slave was to his mind an actual charge upon his 
 
THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 103 
 
 Christian charity. The African had been brought to 
 this land, as he believed, to be redeemed. He never 
 once dreamed of him as an equal, except in his right to 
 salvation. Bondage, subordination, he accounted a 
 privilege to the bondman, and a burden and a duty to 
 the master. The southern cause was, to his apprehen- 
 sion, simply a movement in support of divine order, 
 and in furtherance of a divine purpose. His own 
 relations with the institution had not been so intimate 
 or extended a.s to corrupt his feeling, or to abate the 
 sincerity of his belief. He did his duty as a Christian 
 master w^th assiduity, zeal, and tenderness. In his 
 view the slave was simply a heathen, incapable of 
 development to the point of self-direction, who was 
 subjected to the white man in order that he might be 
 kept from the sins of barbarism, and given an oppor- 
 tunity for salvation. 
 
 He thought the southern people had been divinely 
 fitted for the evangelization and perhaps the ultimate 
 civilization of the race thus intrusted to their guardian- 
 ship. He recognized the fact that this preparation had 
 made the south a distinct and peculiar people, and he 
 believed that a high religious duty and a most exalted 
 destiny demanded the preservation and maintenance of 
 these distinctive features. He believed the events in 
 which he w^as taking part were the subject of prophecy, 
 so that the cause for which he fought became as much 
 a part of his religious belief as the sacraments of the 
 church to Avhich he belonged. 
 
 Tender as he was by nature, he was a zealot with 
 a heart of adamant. He did not hate, nor did he 
 
104 THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 
 
 wish to harm or persecute. He simply abhorred evil. 
 He regarded the opposition of the north to slavery not 
 so much as an intrusion upon the master's right as an 
 interference with his duty — a sort of religious libertin- 
 ism from which the south was bound by the most 
 sacred obligations to protect her people and their insti- 
 tutions. He was not a man of words. His convictions 
 showed only now and then through the dense armor of 
 impenetrable reserve in which he clothed his life and 
 in the seeming contradiction between acts which are 
 reconcilable only on this hypothesis. 
 
 In type and character he was to his chief almost 
 identically what Cromwell was to Fairfax. ISTo man in 
 history may more fitly be taken as the prototype of 
 Lee than the able, courtly, honorable, yet conservative 
 Parliamentary general of whom Milton wrote that his 
 
 ' ' name in arms tlirough Europe rings, 
 Filling each mouth with envy or with praise." 
 
 At that day, and for a long time afterward, it is 
 unquestionable that he was regarded as a far abler gen- 
 eral than he who at length became the Lord Protector. 
 Yet, looking at the history of that time, it is easy to 
 see that the chief owed more to his subordinate than 
 he was able to give to the great man who was growing 
 into commanding stature in the shadow of his fame. 
 Without Cromwell's iron will, tireless energy, and 
 readiness to accept responsibility, Fairfax's fame 
 would hardly have exceeded that of a score of his 
 contemporaries. Like Lee he was already an honored 
 and accomplished soldier, before the "Lord of the 
 Fens" had organized his "Ironsides," or looked into 
 
THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 105 
 
 the face of an enemy in battle array. Like him, too, 
 whenever he fought without the support of his great 
 Ueutenant, his battles were indecisive or his victories 
 unprofitable. But for Cromwell, Fairfax's career 
 would undoubtedly have ended at Marston Moor, and 
 but for Jackson's marvelous victories on the Shenan- 
 doah, and bis lightning-like blow upon the enemy's 
 right at Mechanicsville, it is more than probable that 
 Lee's military fame would hardly have been greater to- 
 day than it was when he resigned his commission in 
 the United States army to offer his services to Virginia. 
 
 It should be remembered in comparing these men 
 that Jackson had, within a single month, defeated four 
 armies, each greater than his own, and all threatening 
 one of the gate wavs of the confederate capital, and, 
 brought to his superior an army which already believed 
 itself invincible, before Lee had ever fought a battle. 
 The kingly soldier simply absorbed the relentless 
 fighter's fame, and until retrospective analysis began 
 to separate the two lives into their elements, perhaps 
 unconsciously built up renown upon his lieutenant's 
 works and attributes. 
 
 We do not seek to depreciate Lee, Blower. He 
 Avas a splendid type of that distinctively southern char- 
 acter which is rapidly becoming extinct — a type to be 
 mourned by sentimentalists and poets, but whom the 
 world will hardly miss a hundred years hence. Jack- 
 son was a type of that universal American character 
 which puts conviction above self— the end above the 
 means. He would never have hesitated when the 
 necessity was apparent, to put slaves into the field to 
 
106 THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 
 
 fight for their liberty, for he would have accounted 
 such service a display of manhood sufficient to entitle 
 any slave to freedom. He would never have allowed 
 his veterans to suffer for food in the trenches about 
 Petersburg, while at Greensboro and Danville were 
 stored supplies enough to last his army for a year. He 
 would never have donned his best uniform and 
 mounted his jeweled sword, in order to overawe with 
 a show of outward splendor that simple soldier who, 
 reckless of everything except the result, had pursued 
 his fleeing enemy with sleepless ardor for ten days and 
 nights only to stand abashed and pitiful before the 
 gaudily bedecked captain of a vanquished and famish- 
 ing army. If this woful duty had fallen to the lot of 
 "Stonewall" Jackson, one can easily imagine with 
 what unassuming self-forgetfulness it would have been 
 performed. He would have met his battle-stained 
 conqueror in a garb that would have bespoken his 
 active participation in the tremendous toils his army 
 had but recently endured. He would not have posed 
 for effect. He would not have been engaged in con- 
 templation of himself focused in tlie camera of history, 
 but his whole thought would have been of the people 
 whose cause he had sustained until the last extremity. 
 Grant and Jackson belonged essentially to the same 
 type of American manliood. As soldiers both were 
 impassive, self-reliant, and relentless. Neither had or 
 could have any confidants of their purposes. To a few 
 both were alike warm and tender ; to the many, cold 
 and distant. Both were zealots — one in the cause of 
 the Federal Union, as the representative of human 
 
THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 107 
 
 liberty, and the other in the maintenance of what 
 he deemed a divine order. It is to this type of 
 manhood that the south owes not only the fame which 
 clings around the story of the struggle for separation, 
 but also the far more marvelous supremacy which it 
 has since achieved in the counsels of the nation whose 
 allegiance it sought forever to renounce. 
 June 13, 1885. 
 
''peace in the cloyer-scented 
 era;^ 
 
 THE odor of perique is in a modest room that looks 
 out over bright waters, and traces of its dark viscid 
 fiber show among the golden-brown granules, in the 
 pouch wliicli Alice wrought. We smoked the pipe of 
 peace again last night, Blower, while the cool breezes 
 blew softly over the placid water, the stars trooped 
 lazily through the summer sky, and lovers loitered on 
 the moonlit beach. The strong mephitic odor of 
 that curious variety of the nicotiana, which needs 
 the richness of tropical alluvions and the steaming heat 
 of southern seas for its perfection, speaks always to my 
 mind of that friend Avho was once an enemy, Pascal 
 Raines, the owner of Buckhead, or, as it used • to be 
 termed, Buckhead Lodge, in the forks of the Ogee- 
 chee. This is the twentieth 3^ear that we have met 
 to smoke the calumet and fill the ditch of difference 
 that absence digs between us, not with protestations, 
 but with honest, manly assertions of individuality. 
 Sometimes it has been a winter meeting, under the 
 gray-bearded live oaks on some romantic hummock, 
 where the mid-winter skies are soft as summer, and 
 the air is rich with the united fragrance of fruits and 
 flowers. Again, he has fled from the heats of a south- 
 ern summer to the cool breezes of the northern main 
 or the shadow of the snow-capped mountains Avith 
 
 108 
 
T.HE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 109 
 
 their somber evergreen mantle and cool streams flash- 
 ing and purling over the rocks in its shadow. We 
 have hunted and fished together — such hunting and 
 fishing as decrepid veterans may do — and always count 
 the week or month we spend witli each other one long 
 holiday of healthful thought. When he goes back to 
 his plantation to "reload," as he says, I return to the 
 city's turmoil strengthened by w^hat he has brought 
 me out of the silence of his isolation. 
 
 We are a queer pair, Blower, Pascal Eaines and I. 
 He loves to smoke perique in a long-stemmed Pow- 
 hattan or Sally Lun. " On state occasions onl}^," as he 
 says, does he indulge this luxury ; but he is always 
 urging me to mix more or less of this seductive nar- 
 caphthon, with the spicy leaf grown on the sunny Pied- 
 mont slopes and ripened by ambrosial honey -dews, with 
 which I am Avont to fill your polished bowl. I have 
 thought sometimes that these contrasted tastes might 
 be types of our respective natures ; but the fancy is 
 not one I love to dwell upon. We entered yesterday 
 on our annual holiday, and last night was our first com- 
 munion at which we broke the bread of thought a year 
 of silence had provided. 
 
 We are a queer pair, yet he is almost as close a 
 friend of these, my later years, as Joe was of my 
 earlier days. It is strange that it should be so. Our 
 lives Avere not shaped by kindred influences, nor did 
 w^e learn to count the same things holy in our early 
 days. With Joe and me fraternity was almost as 
 much a birthright as if the same roof -tree had sheltered 
 our cradles and the same mother nourished us upon her 
 
110 THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 
 
 heart. We were formed in the same mold, tempered 
 by the same fires. He was simply a type of the class to 
 which I belonged. Thrown together in boyhood, we 
 clung as naturally as magnet and iron. What Joe said, 
 I had already felt ; what he did I was willing to aid 
 in doing. All that made life worth living to him, was 
 matter of aspiration, also, to me. We were sworn 
 friends by the mere force of natural and apparent 
 affinities. 
 
 It is not so Avith this later friend who loves the 
 heavy, resinous breath of the dark perique better than 
 the spicy fragrance of the golden leaf which grows be- 
 neath the dog-wood's shadow. The smoke-wreaths 
 that curl about him are dark and dense as azure war- 
 clouds in comparison with the pearl-fringed circlets 
 that rise above your steaming bowl. 
 
 He is Southern to the core, this friend of ours. 
 Blower, and yet the red beard and light brown hair 
 that frames his fair, full face bespeak a Saxon ancestry 
 that goes back to the days when Gurtli wore a collar 
 and black-browed Normans lorded it over blue-eyed 
 churls. It is a curious fallacy that even yet types 
 the Southern man to Northern apprehension as dark 
 and saturnine in aspect. The truth is that the South- 
 ern people are the purest English stock to be found 
 upon the globe, outside of England itself. There is 
 the peculiar American lankness of figure, it is true, 
 but the gray-blue English eyes and neutral-tinted 
 brown hair are more generally to be met with at 
 the South than in any other part of the western con- 
 tinent. This fact is not remarkable, though it seems 
 
THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. Ill 
 
 almost incredible no doubt, to those in whose minds the 
 conventional " Southerner " is still extant, and the real 
 one unknown. Pascal Raines was the master of al- 
 most unnumbered slaves, and is still the lord of many 
 acres — how many I do not know, for he speaks but 
 seldom of these things. I do know that life and 
 duty have put heavy cares upon his shoulders since the 
 close of the great conflict and he has not spared him- 
 self in his efforts to provide for other's wants. 
 
 I thought of these things as we sat together in 
 pleasant converse or half-dreaming silence last night. 
 Blower, and my thoughts almost unconsciously took 
 form in words as I said mournfully : 
 
 " You are the last of one of the old Southern fami- 
 lies, are you not, Pascal?" 
 
 " Humph," he responded, blowing the heavy smoke 
 impatiently through the brown mustache which is be- 
 ginning to show hints of gray. " I am of an old enough 
 family, and happen to be the last male in the direct 
 line, but I do not know as that fact justifies your dolo- 
 rous tone. Besides I may yet marry some fair Yankee 
 help-meet and bless the world with a dozen scions of 
 the two best stocks on earth. How would you like 
 that notion ? Ha, ha, my dear Thomas ben Nathan, 
 I see you wince, and yet I am beginning to look upon 
 it as both a philanthropic and a patriotic duty. You 
 yourself, much as you exult in the Puritan, are half in- 
 clined to mourn the Cavalier. 
 
 He has given me this quaint appellation in our 
 familiar intercourse ever since he learned my father's 
 name. He professes to see some curious significance 
 
112 . THE VETERAN AND HlS PIPE. 
 
 in the juxtaposition of the two names. I do not alto- 
 gether accept his view, but it pleases his southern love 
 of the quaint, almost grotesque, and I do not object. 
 
 " I declare," he often says, " you are well named. 
 Thomas the doubter is the son of Nathan the undoubt- 
 mg — the Yankee that is springs from the Yankee that 
 was. Your father must have been a prophet, Ben 
 N^athan." 
 
 This constant playful reference to my father, whom 
 I especially revered, annoyed me at first. I do not 
 mind it now, because it pleases my friend. 
 
 " It is a curious thing," he continued musingly, 
 " what notions you Northerners have of our ' old South- 
 ern families. ' I have always been amused at the tone 
 of reverent admiration or irreverent envy in which they 
 are usually spoken of by your people. We, of course, 
 are proud of them, but not at all in the way you seem 
 to think. I am of kin to nearly all the old families of 
 Georgia, a dozen South Carolina grandees, and several 
 of the most dubiously-descended of Virginia stock. 
 There was a Eaines among Oglethorpe's advisers. By 
 the same token he got himself into trouble for opposing 
 the introduction of slavery into the colony, being de- 
 nounced by that eighteenth century evangelist White- 
 field, who insisted upon slavery both as a good invest- 
 ment and a means of grace for the heathen. That was 
 what I call a comfortable doctrine. There is a rumor 
 that the great preacher expended a considerable por- 
 tion of the funds he had raised in the northern colonies 
 in transplanting slavery into Georgia. I have never 
 been able to think of this without laughing. Picture 
 
THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 113 
 
 to yourself the saintly sire of a ISTew England abolition- 
 ist contributing money to hire a South Carolina slave- 
 holder to move across the Savannah in order to plant 
 the patriarchal institution securely on the virgin soil of 
 Georgia ! What a merry mocker is time ! It cost the 
 'I^orthern colonies' a hundred and fifty years after- 
 wards, three hundred and seventy -five thousand of their 
 bravest, slain outright in battle, to undo what they hired 
 Whitefield to establish. We lost as many more, I sup- 
 pose, and the number who were half killed — who lost 
 legs or arms like us, or were otherwise battered and 
 defaced by war, must have been two or three times as 
 many more. Oh, it was big interest that the laches of 
 that day bore in our time. What say you to that 
 notion, Thomas ben Nathan, thou child of the Puritan ? 
 
 " It's not strange, " he went on, after we had had 
 our quiet laugh at his grim humor, "that time is called 
 a whirligig. You see, my sire was right and yours was 
 probably wrong, on the A^ery question on which we 
 differed so strongly that each left a limb on the battle- 
 field — you on the right side and I on the wrong one. 
 
 " As I said, my ancestor was opposed to introducing 
 slavery into Georgia I don't know anything about 
 the ground of his opposition, and indeed it does not 
 matter. Perhaps it was his own experience. I don't 
 know whether it Avas he or his father, but one of them 
 had a bit of memory that ought to haA^e made him an 
 enemy of slaA^ery all his life. What Avas that ? He 
 Avas brought oA^er from somcAvhere — Scotland or Eng- 
 land, nobody knoAvs Avhicli — and sold for an apprentice 
 to pay passage money and any other supposititious claim 
 
114 THE 7ETERAN AND HIS PIPE, 
 
 of expenditure the ship's captain or the owners may 
 have made in his behalf. That was in Virginia. Being 
 a hlvely young fellow he brought a good price — 300 
 pounds of tobacco, I have heard. His master seems to 
 have moved southward. At least, he himself moved 
 into the wilds of Georgia some time before Oglethorpe's 
 settlement, and had thriftily }^re-empted about half a 
 county, right in the forks of the Ogeechee, the only 
 title he had being the good will of a Cherokee chief, a 
 matchlock and his own nerve. These were good enough 
 though. The gun itself was a formidable affair. It 
 hung over the mantel in the house built on the site 
 of his cabin, until you folks came through with Sher- 
 man about Christmas, 1864. There wasn't much of 
 anything left after you departed on your winding way 
 ' down to the sea.' 
 
 " Oh, don't apologize. We've been over all that on 
 the very spot. It was a brilliant movement, conduct- 
 ed with a laxity of disci])line that would have been im- 
 possible to an army drawn from any other people. 
 That is all there was of it. Sherman had argued Grant 
 into a belief that it was necessary and that he was the 
 only man on earth who could do it. As a military 
 movement, it has been vastly overrated both in diffi- 
 culty and importance, but as an index of American 
 character — of the actual results of republican insti- 
 tutions — it cannot be too highly extolled. There were, 
 it is true, many acts of pillage and some needless 
 destruction of propert}^ For instance, there was no 
 need to have taken my ancestor's superannuated fire- 
 lock and sundry other moveables Avhich cumbered, or 
 
 II 
 
THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 115 
 
 adorned Buckhead Lodge, but it should always be re- 
 membered to the credit of republican institutions that 
 this army of invasion marched from Atlanta to the sea, 
 subsisting itself mainly off the country through the 
 agency of loosely organized bands of pillagers, without 
 any non-combatant's life or woman's virtue being 
 placed in peril. I am as proud of this, Thomas ben 
 JSTathan, as you are of " Stonewall's " exploits on the 
 Shenandoah, and in about the same way, I suspect. 
 After all, though, I must say that I don't like Sherman 
 — not because Buckhead was in his path — but because 
 I don't. I don't like Sheridan, either. But if I must 
 choose between stinking fish — as you did betwixt Lee 
 and Jackson — I will take the one I least dislike and 
 say : ' Give me Sheridan, or give me death, ' or, if it's 
 just as hand}^, put the alternative first. 
 
 " Oh, I know my words are not nicely chosen, but 
 you will not take offense for you know just what I 
 mean. It is useless for any one who fought for the 
 Confederacy to claim that he doesn't feel sick and sore 
 over those last days of its existence. It makes no dif- 
 ference what his opinions may be now, one cannot con- 
 template the destruction of the social order in which 
 he was raised, and remember all that we did and suf- 
 feredj without feeling something akin to animosity 
 against the instruments most actively concerned in the 
 most unpleasant phases of its demise. I don't believe 
 Sherman would ever be well thought of along that 
 line of march if he should live to rival Methu- 
 selah in years. Yet he was kindness itself when 
 the end came. It is really pitiable to see how 
 
116 THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 
 
 ready he was to give up everything, and trust to 
 the honor of a vanquished foe for the peace of 
 the future. Sheridan was a thousand times harder of 
 heart (you see, Ben Nathan, I cannot help saying ' was ' 
 — all this was ever so long ago, and you and I and all 
 who had a hand in it have been in the past tense for 
 ages), but Sheridan's cruelty was that of a soldier. He 
 never shut his eyes on plunder, in a military sense, 
 nor avoided responsibility for destruction. I do not 
 think there is a more soldierly document in the lan- 
 guage than his report of the ravages committed 
 by his troops in making the rich valley of the 
 Shenadoah unavailable as a source of supply for 
 our armies or a well-provided highway for northern 
 invasion. He shirked nothing. There were so 
 many mills burned, so many cattle and horses 
 seized, so many bridges destroyed, and all other 
 needful damage done ' by order of the General com- 
 manding. ' There is something Catonian in its brutal 
 candor. It was barbarism, no doubt, but it was war — 
 done in obedience to orders, and with a discipline as 
 rigorous as that of the Eoman legion. Yes, I like him 
 better than Sherman even yet. 
 
 " Why have the South been so flush of abusive epi- 
 thets applied to these men, and even to Grant himself? 
 Well, it's a way we have, you know. No, it's not the 
 result of war, nor to any great extent to be attributed 
 to ' the chagrin of defeat, ' which you Northern senti- 
 mentalists have spread out like a mantle of charity to 
 cover our sins. We Southern people always were given 
 to speaking rather well of ourselves, and not so very 
 
THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 117 
 
 flatteringly of others. You of the North just reverse 
 this rule. You keep soft words in stock for your 
 enemies and lavish praise upon strangers, while you 
 open the floodgates of abuse and detraction on each 
 other. You have always fed us taffy and we have 
 come to expect it. In the old ante-bellum days we 
 ruled you with a rod of iron, though you always out- 
 numbered us, and if there had been among you any of 
 that unity of purpose that has always characterized the 
 South, whenever it came to a question of asserting her 
 rights or her power, the nation would have been 
 homoo^eneous on the basis of ]^orthern sentiment lono: 
 ago. 
 
 "You suppose it was a natural result of slavery? 
 Pshaw, Ben Nathan, what is the use of busying your- 
 self forever in finding excuses for us. We don't care 
 what made you Yankees what you are, and so do not 
 trouble ourselves to discover apologies for your idiosyn- 
 cracies. AVe know that you pride yourself on furnish- 
 ing more of the milk of human kindness per capita 
 than any other people on earth, and we trade upon 
 that fact, just as you take advantage of a prospect 
 of hostilities between England and Kussia to put 
 up the price of grain. You are afflicted with a 
 mania for forgiveness. For twenty years you have 
 been begging us, in season and out of season, to allow 
 you to forgive us. Strange as \"ou may think it, we 
 do not find much fun in being forgiven. As to the active 
 part of the doctrine, we don't know much about it. 
 We don't forgive — to any great extent, at least. We 
 do, sometimes, forget how we have been wronged; but 
 
118 THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 
 
 as to owning that we were ever in the wrong ourselves, 
 that is against "the genius of our people." Difficulties 
 are ' healed u}) ' with us — literally. That is, they are 
 left to grow over. Sometimes the wound heals and the 
 cicatrix shows always afterward. Then, again, the 
 the wound unites upon the outside fair and smooth, 
 but rankles underneath to break out into angry and 
 malignant action after many days. 
 
 " Of course, you have at length worn us out. One 
 can not resist concession always. After you had given 
 up all you fought for, except the name ; when you re- 
 nounced all remembrance of the war except the 
 music and the ' spread-eagle ' ; when you quietly 
 allowed us to take away the ballot you had so 
 vauntingly bestowed upon the negro ; when, instead of 
 counting a Southern white voter better than a J^orth- 
 ern citizen by two-fifths as in the old slave days, you 
 kindly gave us the odds of Africa in our favor ; when 
 after we had sinned and had no wish to be forgiven, 
 you put a club — nay a million clubs, or the power of a 
 million of suppressed votes, in our hands — and begged 
 us to beat and subjugate you therewith — when you did 
 all this of your own free will and accord, I assure you, 
 Ben Nathan, it was not in Southern human nature 
 longer to resist. We did what you invited us to do, 
 and relied upon your abounding charity to find excuses 
 for our acts. You did not disappoint our expectations. 
 "We wondered, but did not complain. You made the 
 role of injured innocence so pleasant and profitable that 
 we continued to play it with renewed zest. We made 
 the air vocal, from year's end to year's end, with dolor- 
 
THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 119 
 
 ous complaint and unmerited sufferings. We 'kept 
 your zeal for pardon so keenly alive that it was hardly 
 safe for a Southern man to allow himself to be 
 known as such at the ^North lest some sensitive 
 soul should straightway unpack his box of charity and 
 ask to pour the sweet-smelling ointment — the spikenard 
 of forgiveness — upon his errant, unwashed feet. I be- 
 lieve, Ben Nathan, I would have gone with you to 
 the General Encampment of the Grand Army, on 
 our way to the Eangely Lakes, just to have seen 
 your old comrades unhinge your one arm, and hear 
 them sing the old songs, but I couldn't risk it. I was 
 afraid that as soon as they found out that it was a 
 Yankee shell that took off my right-hand supporter, 
 they would insist on passing me round for the kiss of 
 peace and reconciliation, I can't stand that sort of 
 thing, Ben Nathan. I never felt that I had much to 
 forgive, and I don't like to be made a villain of by being 
 everlastingly forgiven. I am really afraid of this ob- 
 trusiveness of pardon. I never knew two fellows to 
 keep on protesting mutual forgiveness who did not 
 eventually renew their quarrel. So I will hide myself 
 in the hills while you greet your brethren, if you must. 
 " You must not be angry, Ben Nathan, but I do 
 wish you Yankees had less sweetness and a little more 
 gall. I know it is all genuine, of course, or try to 
 believe that it is, because. I know you, but — but it isn't 
 easy because it seems so unnatural and — well, hardly 
 self-respecting. If you were right — as you claimed 
 and as I am willing to admit, so far as I am concerned, 
 and can now see — whv not stand on it and let us do 
 
120 THE VETERA]^ AND HIS PIPE. 
 
 some of the " walking." Of course, we cannot hold out 
 always and when you gave us a President who would 
 not fight against the Confederacy even when drafted, 
 with a genuine " Copperhead " Vice-President and 
 a Cabinet containing only one Federal soldier to three 
 Confederates and two " Copperheads,'- as you used to 
 call them, of the tepid, doubting-Thomas order, of 
 course, it seemed like old times and we were bound to 
 profess at length ourselves satisfied and reconciled. 
 But you know it is all a farce. 
 
 " I tell you, Ben Nathan, we are two peoples just as 
 much as you and I are two men. We are not satisfied 
 and will not be till we have fortified and permanently 
 secured what we now hold only as an outpost. You 
 will sometime get tired of boasting of your charity. 
 Then we shall tell each other the truth once more. 
 War is a rough game, but rifles do not lie. Lead and 
 powder are sometimes better medicaments for evil 
 than spikenard and honey ; and when two peoples get 
 far enough apart to have to decide questions arising 
 betwixt them with the sword, it must be many a day 
 before they groAV into one. You are entirely right 
 in your opinion of " Stonewall " Jackson. He was the 
 man on our side, not because he alone won victories, 
 nor even because he was a ISTapoleon in strategy and 
 marvelous rapidity of execution, but above all things 
 because he was the incarnation of the Southern idea. 
 I could tell you something about him myself, but — 
 pshaw, what's the use ? The farce which we call life 
 must be played out in order that the lie which we call 
 history may be written ! " 
 
THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 121 
 
 Our friend knocked the ashes from his pipe upon 
 the window-sill and bade us good night, Blower, before 
 we had half awakened from the dreamy mood which 
 the unaccustomed Perique or his still more unusual 
 words had induced. It is strange that he should be my 
 friend. Blower. It is the harmony of the unlike — the 
 unison of chords that mark the limits of consonance. 
 Yet we can never doubt the manhood of this manliest 
 type of a concurrent but dissimilar life. Our friend- 
 ship was pledged upon the battle-field amid the dark- 
 ness that followed on a doubtful day, in the picket- 
 guarded ground which neither army would yield to 
 the foe. Our first hand-clasp left a bloody imprint by 
 which each attested his sincerity. We know, Blower, 
 that a truer, nobler friend one could not have. Yet 
 we can not agree. Is it because there is an actual, 
 irreconcilable difference — an indefinable right and 
 wrong — that lies between us, or do we think in differ- 
 ent planes which overlap but do not meet ? 
 
 June 26, 1885. 
 
"THE DAT WE CELEBRATE;^ 
 
 FOE the first time, Blower, our great national holi- 
 day finds me in a state of curious uncertainty in 
 regard to the future that is to grow out of our marvel- 
 ous past. In those early days when the people gath- 
 ered in exultant but serious convocation in every 
 hamlet in the land ; when old and young and rich and 
 poor assembled, perhaps in the house of God, perhaps 
 in that temple of liberty which our Puritan forefathers 
 builded in stern simplicity on every village green — the 
 town-house where met the wittenagemote in which the 
 statesmen of the past were trained — or in those other, 
 nobler temples still, wdiose aisles were canopied with 
 verdure, through which the sunshine sent its golden 
 shafts, and through the interstices of which the blue 
 sky smiled down serene approval — in those days we 
 could not doubt. The voice of prayer and the 
 eloquence of an intense, if somewhat boastful, patriot- 
 ism stamped upon the boyish heart a reverence for the 
 day which marks the nation's birth that no lapse of 
 time or frost of age can ever dim." Next to the Christ 
 cradled in the manger, in our boyish reverence, was 
 the nation cradled in the wilds of a new world. In 
 our childish fancy the courage, fortitude and wisdom 
 of our fathers in building a government upon these 
 shores based upon a principle never before practically 
 recognized in political organization, was only less mar- 
 is^ 
 
THE VETEEAN AND HIS PIPE. 123 
 
 velous than that creative power which looked on 
 chaos and said : " Let there be light ! " 
 
 This impression was made more vivid by the simple 
 but unusual pageantry which attended this celebration. 
 The fumes of gunpowder seemed fit incense to offer to 
 the manes of heroes whose memories we worshiped. 
 The cannon's roar was, to our ears, the proud defiance 
 which liberty heralded through its brazen lips to a 
 hostile but admiring world. The bright banner that 
 floated gaily in the summer sunshine was to us the 
 emblem of a new dispensation, not less certainly divine 
 than that which the Invisible traced on tables of stone 
 on the cloud-curtained summit of Sinai, or that which 
 fell from the lips of the golden-haired Galilean on the 
 sunny slopes of Olivet. How reverently we gazed 
 upon the " venerable men who had come down to us 
 from a former generation ! " How the orator's glow- 
 ing periods fired our young hearts to emulate the deeds 
 of those whose wisdom and prowess we felt it a glori- 
 ous privilege to worship even afar off ! With all this, 
 the unaccustomed tumult, the drum, the fife, perhaps a 
 uniformed brass band, the awkward evolutions of ill- 
 trained but gaily-clad militia, the universal freedom 
 from restraint, and mirthful license, queer ly w^edded 
 with serious purpose and high resolve ! This was the 
 Fourth of July of our boyhood. Blower. 
 
 We recall it with a queer shamefacedness to-day — 
 we, in whose hearts its memory still lives, almost as 
 much a thing of sorrow as of joy. I would not for the 
 world, old friend, tell the story of the aspirations it 
 inspired to the wise and cynical children of to-day. 
 
124 THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 
 
 How would they not sneer, Blower, at the thought of 
 grave men and serious-minded matrons sitting with 
 earnest faces, perhaps even with quivering lips, to hear 
 'Hhe old, old story" of that time when 
 
 ' ' Men went forth 
 To plant the seed with tears," 
 
 and of the wonderful harvest which a kindly Provi- 
 dence vouchsafed. We would not think of telling 
 them how fierce a battle Joe and I once fought, under 
 the inspiration of this day, with twelve fire-crackers 
 and a lead cannon, which we cast about a wooden core 
 in a paper mold, with as much care and probably more 
 anxiety than Herr Krupp ever bestowed upon a hun- 
 dred-ton gun. ]!^ot for a king's ransom would we have 
 the high-school children, whose commencement exer- 
 cises we last night witnessed, know that, at their age, 
 our days were full of silly thoughts and our nights of 
 sillier dreams of noble deeds that waited to he done 
 — of that liberty for which our fathers fought made 
 more complete, and the nation they established made 
 more glorious and more free by our endeavor. The 
 hot blood rushes to the cheek which nevermore will 
 lose the brawn it caught when banners waved and 
 trumpets clanged, at the very thought of the calm 
 scorn with which the youth of to-day, who delights in 
 nothing so much as in decrying our institutions, would 
 sneer at such sentimentality. There is something as 
 holy as the memory of a dead love to us, Blower, in 
 that peculiar intermixture of patriotic and religious 
 aspiration which characterized the thought of that 
 time. Christmas and the Fourth of July were, per- 
 
THE VETEEAN AND HIS PIPE. 125 
 
 l]ai3S, no nearer together than they are to-day, but both 
 seemed tinged with an earnestness of tone that is 
 somehow lacking in the present. It was an atmosphere 
 that did not favor doubt. Men believed so strongly 
 that they have lived to wonder at the fervor of their 
 faith, and marvel at the grandeur of their aspiration. 
 
 Something of this — as much as my lips could well 
 utter, Blower — I told last night to our friend that was 
 once an enemy, Pascal Eaines, expressing the belief 
 that Joe's life and thought were largely shaped by 
 the serious and earnest observance of this national 
 anniversary; and venturing the hope that its continu- 
 ous and universal observance, in the future, would 
 exert a very great and beneficent influence on the 
 fortune of our curiously re-united realm. ••' Indeed," I 
 said at length, made bolder by his silence, '-I think 
 this universal holiday, dedicated to liberty, heroism and 
 patriotic devotion, observed, as it is sure to be in some 
 sort of way, by rich and poor and high and low, of 
 every race and creed, in every corner of our land, cannot 
 fail to exert a very powerful influence upon coming 
 generations and incline them to unity of thought and 
 aspiration, by the mere force of a common inheritance 
 of fame." 
 
 I said this anxiously, Blower, for somehow I dreaded 
 to expose my cherished theory of sentimental assimila- 
 tion and peaceful unification of discordant elements 
 through the gentle compulsion of a common tradition, 
 to the analysis and criticism of this almost too honest 
 friend. He was silent for a long time, looking out 
 upon the blue waters where the gibbous moon and 
 
126 THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 
 
 silvered cloud-peaks were reflected in a waveless mirror. 
 Clouds of heavy, perfumed smoke came from his lips. 
 His face grew fixed, and the lids drooped sadly over 
 the brave, true eyes. 
 
 " * Dream of dreamers since the morn 
 When the dreamer Hope was born,' " 
 
 he murmured at length, in an absent tone as if he had 
 forgotten me and my theory. I waited a while to see 
 if he would continue and then asked : 
 " What do you mean ? " 
 
 "The ineradicable propensity of the sentimental 
 philosopher to believe that whatever of good he desires 
 will certainly come to pass because in his view of 'the 
 eternal fitness of things' it ought to be," he answered 
 with a smile. " Your genuine optimist will stop at no 
 absurdity. He vaults lightly over obstacles which 
 reason declares insuperable, and relies witli the utmost 
 assurance upon causes that common sense shows to be 
 uttterly inadequate. Yet he is oftener right than 
 wrong. A belief in one's ability to overcome obstacles 
 oftentimes not only implies, but actually constitutes, 
 the power to do so. Do you know, Ben JSTathan, that 
 this attribute was the real source of that hero's power 
 who is now fighting his last battle on Mount McGregor ? 
 I have always had a quarrel with you Northern people, 
 for failing to appreciate this man to whom you owe so 
 much. 
 
 '' I do not like him because he was the instrument of 
 our humiliation. A man may surrender in good faith, 
 and yet not love the things which remind him of that 
 fact. One may even admit himself to have been wrong 
 
THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 127 
 
 and kiss the rod of chastisement, without having any 
 very warm feeling for the rod itself. Despite all your 
 curious northern theories, Ben ISTathan, chastening and 
 even penitence, constitutes a very poor soil in which to 
 OTOW the tender shoots of love. The smartino; back 
 may promote humility, but the whipping-post is not a 
 favorite trellis for the vine of affection. 
 
 " Yet I verily believe that we are more inclined to do 
 justice to your great hero than the people of the l^orth 
 themselves. You have never more than half appreci- 
 ated Grant because he simply lived his own life without 
 affectation or servility. He did not choose to efface 
 himself because he happened to be a public servant. 
 E'ay, I do not think he could have done so, for his 
 simple heart had no idea that this was what your 
 tyranny required. All the same he would not dance 
 whenever you chose to pipe, and so you half disap- 
 proved your own best military exemplar. You want 
 your heroes to be like the monsters in a museum — 
 forever on exhibition for the public entertainment. 
 You would be willing to put them in golden cages 
 and keep them sleek and fat, if only they would allow 
 themselves to be punched with parasols and singed 
 with cigar stumps, roaring softly now and then, for 
 the amusement of the women and children. 
 
 " There he lies at Mount McGregor now. You note 
 the stubbornness with which he resists the last great foe's 
 approaches, and occasionally speak of the pluck he 
 displays in these last hours, but your hearts are 
 not wrung with sorrow, and you hardly seem to 
 be aware that you are losing a man whose peer 
 
128 THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 
 
 the nation may not see again in centuries. Look 
 at the heaps of circulars, the myriads of advertise- li 
 ments of entertainment for to-morrow. Think how 
 you people — the liberty -loving, self-complacent ISTorth 
 — will celebrate the Fourth of July — the "Nation's 
 birthday," as you love to call it ! Excursions by the 
 thousand on the water and on the land, dinners, dances, 
 picnics, horse races, ball games, rowing matches — 
 everything conceivable except a gathering for any 
 earnest purpose or with any patriotic tone. At how 
 many of these meetings where your people will assemble 
 to-morrow do you suppose Grant's name will be men- 
 tioned, or the sufferings of the greatest of your heroes 
 be given a single thought, unless, indeed, kind Azrael 
 should lay his finger on the patient heart to-night ! In 
 that event some thousands of your fellow veterans would 
 mourn, but the great bulk of the fresh life which must 
 make up your to-morrow, would note the fact only to 
 carp at such inconsiderate marring of their holiday. 
 
 " Suppose it were our Lee who had thus fought for 
 months with death, and was now dvinf^r in sio:ht of his 
 people ! We are not much on alms, and charity, and 
 reform, Ben Nathan, but we stand by our own through 
 thick and thin, and are proud to honor those whose 
 deeds have honored us. In Lee's case the agony was 
 brief, but the South hardly breathed between the first 
 announcement of his peril and the proclamation of his 
 death. Our heroes are as household gods — reverently 
 worshiped in every home; yours as bric-a-brac pur- 
 chased at auction and valued only for its cost, rarity 
 and ornamental character ! 
 
THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 129 
 
 " As I said, Grant, as a military leader, was an opti- 
 mist of the most intense and unreasoning sort. He 
 never anticipated failure nor made any preparation for 
 defeat. If he met with a repulse he replied with an at- 
 tack. Having decided to undertake a task, no matter 
 how impracticable it seemed, he never thought it possible 
 that he could fail. Coolly considered, no more fool- 
 hardy thing was ever attempted than the capture of 
 Donelson by storm with the force under his command. 
 Eat the fact that he thought he could do it, made it 
 possible to this man, to. whom to believe was to accom- 
 plish. Look again at the dislodgement of Bragg's army 
 from Missionary Kidge, by assault. Who but Grant 
 would have attempted it ? Who but he would have 
 believed it possible? I was there and saw it, Ben 
 Xathan ! Saw that thin line scale that circling ridge 
 as sharp-pitched as a gothic roof — four hundred feet of 
 shingly slope broken only by two lines of breastworks 
 which it would have required no little nerve to storm 
 on an open plain, and held as they were by an army 
 not greatly inferior to his own in numbers ! Gods ! It 
 was a miracle I would never have believed 'without 
 the sensible and true avouch of mine own eyes ! ' I 
 could hardly believe it, even as I fled down the flinty 
 path that led rearward from Bragg's headquarters, 
 with a routed rabble at my heels, leaving the horse by 
 which I had stood and watched the wondrous pageant, 
 to furnish some lucky Yankee a mount in lieu of his 
 grass-fed barebones lost at Chickamauga. Perhaps you 
 got it Ben Nathan, and my despatches, too. You did ? 
 Well, I am glad it feU into appreciative hands. 
 9 
 
130 THE VETEEAN AND HIS PIPE. 
 
 ''"What did it? Grant's optimism — nothing else 
 That was unquestionably the strongest position an army 
 ever held. Even after the abandonment of Lookout, 
 fifty thousand men ought to have kept it against four, 
 times their number. The flanks were easily defensible 
 and the front impregnable by nature. Every man in 
 those triple lines of works knew this, and I believe it 
 was the astounding audacity of the attempt that para- 
 lyzed their energies and transformed them on the in- 
 stant, from valiant soldiers into panic-stricken fugitives. 
 In the open plain beneath, Grant had mai^ched and 
 countermarched, for three days, his splendidly equipped 
 host, in sight of every man in our army. These men 
 had asked in wonder, does he mean to assault ? With 
 the conclusion that he did came the almost irresistible 
 conviction that only the certainty of overlapping the 
 unassailable flanks and entrapping them in their secure 
 fastness could induce an attempt so apparently futile. 
 It was optimism against Gibraltar, and optimism won ! 
 
 " I have a great respect for optimism, Ben IS'athan, as 
 you see. It is a wonderful quality in a military 
 leader, and in all lines of effort works miracles ; but in 
 order ^to do so it must be of the active transitive sort. 
 Doing must go hand-in-hand with believing. In the 
 directing mind it is a power no wit can measure ; in 
 the individual it is nothing unless he is a type of all his 
 fellows. Grant was both type and leader. General 
 and soldiers were both wild enthusiasts, whose chief 
 strength lay in the fact that they believed. You were 
 an atom then, Ben IN'athan, standing shoulder to shoul-> 
 der with myriads of other atoms of like tea? per. You 
 
THE VETEEAN AND HIS PIPE. 131 
 
 willed and did, because of this belief in your collective 
 power to do. 
 
 "Even this seemingly impossible victory, however, 
 was no such optimistic miracle as you propose. Is it 
 possible that you think such a Fourth of July as you 
 will see to-morrow can ever constitute the pabulum on 
 Tvhich a virile patriotism is likely to thrive ? Under- 
 stand me, I am not inclined to complain. I can see 
 how^ it hurts you. 
 
 "For myself I do not believe strongly enough in 
 either phase of the Puritanic ideal to suffer very acutely 
 at the desecration of the day. Theoretically, I admit 
 the correctness of your view as to the parity of human 
 right, but practically — w^ell, Ben Nathan, you know 
 how I feel. If I dwelt in the atmosphere you breathe 
 I think I should soon feel as you do. If you were in 
 my place you would never feel as I do, I admit, but you 
 w^ould be just as weak and helpless in the face of the 
 great fact of essential difference. To admit the right 
 in the abstract, is one thing ; to reduce it to practice 
 in the concrete, quite another. Law matters little 
 so long as it remains a dead letter. The real facts lie 
 deeper than laws and forms can go. Primal causes 
 may have been removed, but effects remain, fixed and 
 rooted by generations of divergent growth. 
 
 "It does not hurt me, therefore, to see the serious 
 festival, w^ith its flavor of Puritanic cant, changed into 
 a day of universal merry-making. In fact, I may say 
 it pleases me, for it shows that you people of the J^orth 
 are getting, year by year, further and further away 
 from the stern, dour, self-depreciating cant of Puritan- 
 
132 THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 
 
 ism which left its stamp upon your life — in short, that 
 you of the E'orth are changing faster than we of the 
 South could possibly be changed. I fancy that some 
 instinctive appreciation of this fact is at the bottom of 
 your curious notion that the Soutliern people are under- 
 going a miraculous transformation. It seems to me, 
 sometimes, as if you looked upon us as just emerging 
 from the chrysalid and anticipated the swift develop- 
 ment of angelic pinions on our regenerated essences. 
 Why should not you change as well as we? Indeed, 
 why should not you change rather than we ? You are 
 used to it. You have welcomed the outcast until " the 
 uttermost parts of the earth " have spawned upon you 
 and well-nigh overwhelmed you. We are not fond of 
 strangers. We do not believe in " breeding down." We 
 took our dose of old-world scum all at once — took it 
 early, and have assimilated it thoroughly. We have a 
 race that is almost homogeneous. The Southern man 
 is unmistakable and inimitable. ISTo length of resi- 
 dence can make the man of foreign or northern birth 
 one of us or indistinguishable among us. The white 
 people of the South are a real people — one having 
 marked and striking characteristics common to them 
 all. 
 
 " You of the I^orth are a medley. You have tried 
 to assimilate the world's life and lost your own identity. 
 You are cosmopolitan in the sense that chowder is 
 homogeneous. Its components are infinite, and its 
 resultant unlike anything that ever was before. At 
 first you Yankee-ized the jetsam of the old world, 
 almost the instant that it touched vour shores. Noav, 
 
THE VETEKAN AND HIS PIPE. 133 
 
 it is doubtful whether the original type will not very 
 soon be lost. Already it has ceased to be a controlling 
 force in the land. You are hardly past middle age, 
 my friend, but you are a type of an almost extinct 
 species. If it were put to a vote in the JSTorthern States 
 to-day, they would not give the negro the ballot even 
 after twenty years of growth and development on his 
 part. We of the South are steadfast ; you are the 
 changelings. Perchance you will yet come to us as you 
 fondly fancy we are now coming to you. 
 
 "But why, in the name of heaven, Ben JN'athan, 
 should you get the idea that the Fourth of July — and 
 by that I mean your old Fourtli instinct with the sent- 
 iment of liberty, equality, and divine right — why should 
 you think that tliis common inheritance of freedom and 
 glory to be stronger now than it was a quarter of a 
 century ago? We had your Fourtli of July, in the ante- 
 bellum days, and observed it very much as you did. 
 There was, perhaps, not quite so much cant, but in de- 
 fault of that I think we had a little more 'buncombe.' 
 There was another difference, too. You enlarged upon 
 and developed the individual idea embodied in the Decla- 
 ration of Independence. We were content to celebrate 
 the collective results of the struggle. To the ]S"orthern 
 mind, that document became at length the first step in 
 a universal revolution for the establishment and equali- 
 zation of human rights. To us, it was enough that it 
 was the initial step in the establishment of a new sov- 
 ereignty. With our steadfastness of purpose and hos- 
 tility to innovation we adhered very closely to the 
 orig:::.vl idea of our revolution itself. With your in- 
 
134 THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 
 
 satiable greed for change and restless desire for im- 
 provement, the idea became cmnulative, and the Fourth 
 of July came to represent to you the past, present, and 
 future of human perfectibility. You twisted, construed 
 and added to the florid rhetoric of the ' Declaration ' 
 until it contained, or implied, all that you dreamed that 
 humanity might sometime possess of liberty, including, 
 if I may say so, not a little of license. 
 
 "To you, the new Fourth of July represents a 
 broader, nobler freedom and a grander nationality than 
 the old one could. But with us — ah, well, our dead — 
 dead brothers and still ghastlier hopes — lie heaped be- 
 tween us and the old one still ! The Fourth of July 
 that is observed in your heart, my friend, must of ne- 
 cessity he gall and wormwood — dust and ashes — in the 
 mouth of the Southern man for generations. The very 
 results which have endeared its sentimenl^ to your ap- 
 prehension recall his own humiliation, or still worse, 
 his fathers's degradation. I have gone further than 
 most of them in self-renunciation. I freely admit that 
 you were right and we were wrong ; but I don't care 
 to hear the fact proclaimed or know that it is being 
 celebrated. I don't mind a Fourth of July made up 
 of horse-races and base-ball games, but if we were 
 likely to have one of your old-time earnest and intense 
 affairs, with Yorktown and Appomattox in the same 
 leash, I swear to you, Ben Nathan, I would take the 
 next train to Canada and stay until the hot Aveather 
 had wilted the patriotism it evoked. 
 
 " Besides that, my friend, you have made the Fourth 
 of July especially and essentially a ' niggers' ' day. 
 
THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 135 
 
 ' You don't see how ? ' I suppose not. It is surprising 
 how httle plain fact a Yankee can see, when it conflicts 
 with his pet theories. Can- 1 you see that 3^our Fourth of 
 July is the very apotheosis of individual liberty and 
 equality of right ? If the negro hasn't " the first call " in 
 the glorification of that idea I would like to know who 
 has. Wouldn't I appear to good advantage scraping 
 the leading violin in such a demonstration, and leaving 
 blind Tom, the black philosopher who weaves baskets 
 in my kitchen, to play second fiddle ? I don't " bank on " 
 my modesty, as you J^ortbern people claim to do, but 
 I can't help admitting that if we have got to have that 
 kind of a Fourth of eluly, Tom's place is in the lead. 
 lie owes everything to the idea it represents, Avhile I — 
 well, honestly, I cannot see what the average white 
 man of the South owes it in the line of good-will. My 
 children, or grandchildren, if I should have any, may 
 possibly be better off — have more enjoyment and a 
 truer happiness, I mean — than they would have been 
 but for your victory. I don't see how they could, 
 though. The fact is, ^ambo has captured the Fourth 
 of July. We can't celebrate it with him and it won't 
 do to leave him out of its observance. Even 'bun- 
 combe' cannot glorify to the negro's face the sacred 
 privileges we refuse to allow him to exercise. Don't 
 you see, Ben IS'athan, that just as long as your beauti- 
 ful theory cannot be reduced to practice, instead of 
 acting as an emolient, it is bound to be a most caustic 
 irritant ? " 
 
 It does seem. Blower, as if there was something of 
 method in the outspoken madness of our Southern 
 
136 THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 
 
 friend. Is it possible that right has its vanishing 
 point ? Do faith and doubt somewhere become indis- 
 tinguishable ? Is it true that the assertion of abstract 
 right sometimes becomes, in the concrete, an actual 
 wrong ? Is it true that while the colored man rejoices, 
 the white man of the South must mourn ? Is freedom 
 right, and equality of power the true basis of govern- 
 ment ; or is the old-time Fourth of July only calculated 
 for higher latitudes and for men with white skins ? I 
 cannot answer. Blower, for the truth that Yesterday 
 poured forth its blood to establish. To-day counts al- 
 most unworthy of consideration. The guns are boom- 
 ing for the birth-day! What is the story that they tell ? 
 July 3, 1885, 
 
THE HARMO]^Y OF DISAGEEE- 
 MENT. 
 
 "TTTE did not go to Portland, where our brethren of 
 V V the Grand Army — our sometime comrades — are 
 assembled now in camp, for a variety of reasons, Blower. 
 First among them may be noted the fact that we pre- 
 ferred the company of one " enemy," as Pascal Eaines 
 persists in designating himself, to many friends, and 
 the certainties of actual bass to the uncertainties of 
 possible salmon. So we still linger by the blue lake 
 whose waters yield us day by da}^ the relaxation of fine 
 sport and the solitude which two earnest minds make 
 populous with contrasted thought. The harmony of 
 disagreement still prevails betwixt us, Blower, and we 
 not only fight over, at the lunch hour, on the cushion- 
 ing grass, beneath the sheltering elms that stand sentry- 
 like in the encirchng meadows, or at evening on the 
 breezy porch, the battles of yesterday, but mark out 
 the lines of to-morrow's conflicts. 
 
 There is no sham about Pascal Eaines. He is one 
 of those inconceivable things to the average IN'orthern 
 mind — a Southern man who never held an office and 
 who has no fancy for a title. He was one of the many 
 who did not favor an appeal to arms, believing 
 that it would be unsuccessful; but who offered his 
 services among the first, because he would not have 
 
 137 
 
138 THE VETEEAN AND HIS PIPE. 
 
 any one think him a laggard in defending what were 
 deemed the rights of his section. He refused prefer- 
 ment again and again, and only yielded to the tide of 
 proffered honors when imperatively ordered to report 
 for duty on the staff of a great leader with desig- 
 nated rank. He fully justified the sagacity which 
 directed his appointment. He is one of those curious 
 combinations of trooper and philosopher which the 
 Southern planter life seems only to produce in perfec- 
 tion. He Avas of that rare coterie Avhich embrace a 
 large portion of the subalterns of the Confederate 
 army, who fought the Union forces by day, and at 
 niglit discussed with each other the principles and 
 theory of Federal government, and mapped out the 
 destiny of those twin republics they hoped to see grow 
 and prosper on the American continent, one of which 
 they were engaged in founding in opposition to the 
 demands of the other. 
 
 " For six months," he said the other night, '' I served 
 in front of Petersburg on one leg, reading Victor Hugo, 
 discussing the Federal Constitution and wondering by 
 turns whether it would be ni}^ luck to be hanged or 
 shot ; all the time on half rations, in a mud-daubed hut 
 just big enough for four men to inhabit horizontally^, 
 with the shells flying about us every time you fellows 
 got a fit of ill temper — when your mail was behind 
 time, or your pork and beans not done to a turn for 
 Sunday's breakfast." 
 
 He thinks it was a very dift'erent thing to be a soldier 
 of the Confederacy and a supporter of the Union ; and 
 I am not sure that he is not right, and that the differ- 
 
THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 139 
 
 ence continues to this day. What he terms that 
 '' curious exhibition of ]S"orthern notions " which called 
 for the appointment of two thousand extra police in the 
 provincial down-east city where the general encamp- 
 ment was to be held, and actually proposed the seizure 
 and inspection of every package sent by express to an 
 old soldier in the camp, from apprehension that it 
 might contain alcoholic stimulants, contrary to ''the 
 constitution and the laws of the good State of Maine," 
 not only amused him greatly, but moved him to a com- 
 parison of the two peoples, especially as regards their 
 relations to the men who fought at their behest. 
 
 " You will pardon me, Ben Nathan," he said, as we 
 smoked our evening pipes upon the porch, " if I say 
 that you Yankees keep me in a constant flutter of alter- 
 nate admiration and disgust. Just as soon as I have 
 gotten myself well reconciled to the fact that we are of 
 the same breed and elected to the same destiny, you 
 are sure to do something that seems to me so unmanly 
 and contemptible that 1 turn again to the contempla- 
 tion of the differences between us and am grateful not 
 only for the fate that has made us two peoples, but 
 for the unalterable conditions that must forever keep us 
 distinct." 
 
 " But are they unalterable ? " I insisted on inquiring, 
 in a tone which must have expressed my firm convic- 
 tion that they are not. 
 
 "]Srow, my friend," exclaimed he impatiently, 
 " what is the use of tr3ang to shirk the inevitable ? It 
 took you a long time to get far enough from your early 
 notions to recognize the fact that the war was not an 
 
140 THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 
 
 accident, nor a move in a political game, but a natural 
 and forceful expression of the fact that we had been 
 two peoples instead of one — that two antagonistic 
 forces, two mutually destructive ideas, had been incar- 
 nated in populations curiously like and yet irreconcil- 
 ably unlike, within our national limits. You resisted 
 ma-nfuUy, but you came to my ground at length on this 
 question. At the same time, by some subtle alchemy 
 which I can not understand, I found my own ideas 
 undergoing a strange transformation. We never said 
 much about it, as you know, Ben I^athan. You kindly 
 avoided it, from fear of giving offense to me ; and 
 I felt no inclination to discuss w4th you the rights and 
 wrongs of that social system which was at once a cause 
 and consequence of that inherent dissonance between 
 the life of the North and of the South. It certainly 
 was not argument that undermined my convictions, 
 nor do I think it was the result of observation of the 
 social and economic system that has succeeded slavery. 
 That is yet too rudimentary in its character to form 
 the basis of conviction. I believe it must have been 
 your personality, Ben Nathan — that indefinable some- 
 thing, that indeterminate ether by wdiich one mind 
 impresses itself upon another — that produced this 
 curious revolution in my thought. 
 
 " Strange as it may seem to you, my belief in what we 
 used to term ' Northern fanaticism ' was entirely sincere. 
 I do not think even that phrase fully expresses my senti- 
 ment. Let me say that I thought this Northern fanati- 
 cism, as it was called, was not fanaticism at all, but 
 hypocrisy pure and simple. 1 knew, of course, that 
 
THE VETERAN AND illS PIPE. 141 
 
 there were fanatics — John Brown and men of his tj^pe. 
 These men we honestly pitied, believing them to be the 
 dupes and victims of others, hypocrites who cared neither 
 for liberty nor slavery, but desired strife and were ani- 
 mated by envy. Even with you for my friend, Ben 
 ]^athan — a Yankee whose sincerity I could not doubt, 
 and whose candor hid nothing from my scrutiny — it Avas 
 Ion O'er than I would care to confess befor^e I realized 
 that with you equality of right was a real principle, 
 an established conviction, and that you were in fact a 
 tvpe of a great element of Northern life. It was then 
 that I first began really to respect the people of the 
 Korth as a moral force. Before that time I had counted 
 the meanest of them as the best — the really half-hearted, 
 the insincere who were willing to barter conviction for 
 comfort or favor, had seemed to me the real patriots — 
 the worthiest element. Then it was that I first began 
 to understand the rationale of the war for the Union, 
 from the Northern soldier's point of view, and to re- 
 spect those whom we had fought, not merely as 
 'mighty men of war,' but also as representatives of a 
 great idea — soldiers of conscience, and patriots of the 
 broadest and noblest motives. 
 
 " About this time my ideas in regard to slavery, the 
 war, and almost all that had been at the South, under- 
 went a great and curious change. I found myself, 
 almost in an instant, looking at slavery, as it were, with 
 your Gjes. I not only regretted that it ever existed, but 
 stood ready to condemn the theory on which it was 
 based. I was Avilling to admit, as Mr. Cable has recent- 
 ly admitted, that you of the North were right, and we 
 
142 THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 
 
 of the South were wrong. I suppose this conclusion 
 was just as much a surprise to the brilliant novelist as 
 it was to me, and I have a notion that it was brought 
 about in pretty much the same manner — by uncon- 
 scious communion with sincere JS'orthern minds. Per- 
 haj)s I ought to say by unbiased observation of North- 
 ern life. For a long time I was unwilling to give way 
 to this feeling, and in seeking to combat it, I first per- 
 ceived that inherent difference which you were so loth 
 to admit, and which you still persist in believing to be 
 characteristic only of a past that may be forgotten. 
 
 " I know that you are wrong because I have an in- 
 stinctive knowledge of my own people, and you have 
 unconsciously given me the key to the hearts of yours. 
 You hope we may become assimilated and homogene- 
 ous. I know Ave can not, at least for centuries ; and I 
 believe that long before they reach the point where 
 assimilation might be possible, if we then stood in sen- 
 timent and inclination where we do to-day, the desire 
 for homogeneity will have failed, and the differences 
 will have crystallized into antagonisms. The trouble 
 with you, Ben Nathan, is that you have never been but 
 half convinced of the dissimilarity between the two 
 populaces. Individually you note it, and perhaps 
 wonder at it. My frank confessions of conviction seem 
 to you even yet half incredible, because you will persist 
 in measuring my thought by your own standard of 
 development. Even then, you are compelled to admit 
 that there is between us as individuals, a radical, almost 
 a structural difference of mental and moral growth. 
 You hesitate to extend this rule to the masses of 
 
THE VETEKAN AND HIS PIPE. 143 
 
 these respective peoples, and yet you know that you and 
 I, individually, are infinitely nearer together and 
 better able to understand and appreciate each other's 
 thought than the average of our respective compatri- 
 ots. Twenty years of unrestricted intercourse has 
 made us just able to perceive, and perhaps to define the 
 difference. What is the real status of my old comrades 
 who have no Yankee friend to whom they freely un- 
 bosom themselves, or of your ISTorthern philosopher who 
 has no recklessly sincere Southern associate to keep him 
 from being led astray by his own sentimental specula- 
 tions ? We are two peoples, Ben Nathan, let me say it, 
 again, and you must make this fact the basis of all 
 theories in regard to our future relations, if you expect 
 them to be verified by time or crowned with success. 
 We are two peoples, and I don't see how we are ever to 
 become one. I believe I am just as sorry for it as you, 
 but I realize what stands in the way and you do not." 
 
 " ' Slavery separated us and slavery is dead, ' do you 
 say?" 
 
 " Don't be a fool, Ben I^athan. If it were slavery that 
 separated the two peoples — mind I say if it were — it 
 held us apart so long that the difference became congen- 
 ital, and if the cause had been entirely removed — mind 
 you I say if it had — it would have required generations 
 to restore the original identity of character. We speak 
 the same language but our words do not mean the same 
 things. ' Liberty,' ' slavery,' ' the state,' ' the nation,' 
 Hhe rights of man,' 'the privilege of the ballot' — 
 these are but a few of the thousand terms that mean 
 one thing upon a Southern man's tongue and another 
 
144 THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 
 
 in a E'orthern man's ear. ' Slavery,' as /think of it, is 
 dead. The slave of my remembrance, is free. But 
 slavery, as ?/r?^mean it, is not dead, and the slave whom 
 you think that you have liberated, has hardly more of 
 what you call freedom than he had before the Federal 
 Constitution was made to embrace a guaranty of right 
 as false and delusive as the declaration of its preamble, 
 was always Ijeld, and no doubt intended to be.- We are 
 two peoples, my friend. 
 
 " Only look at the difference in the regard we have 
 for those who fought for us. Your soldiers represent a 
 successful cause. The nation owes its existence to their 
 devotion. The North enjoined on them the defense 
 and support of her distinctive theories, not only of gov- 
 ernment but of social order, and they performed her 
 behest. Victory crowned your banners. Prosperity 
 followed on your triumphs, and peace has rested with 
 your rusting eagles. All this was reversed with us. The 
 Soiithern soldier represents to the Southern people 
 defeat, poverty, humiliation. All that you gave your 
 people we failed to secure for ours. Yet compare the 
 esteem in which ' the blue,' and ' the gray,' are held in 
 the contrasted sections to-day. I do not mean how you 
 regard ' the blue,' and we regard ' the gray,' abstractly, 
 though even that might be an instructive parallel. I 
 believe that if Fitzhugh Lee should ride his black stallion 
 down Broadway on any public occasion, wearing his old 
 slouched hat and soiled Confederate uniform, he would 
 get a warmer greeting from the populace than any officer 
 of your army excepting only the afflicted veteran on 
 Mount McGregor. Reverse the case, and let any Federal 
 
THE VETEEAN AND HIS PIPE. 14:5 
 
 soldier ride through the streets of New Orleans — our 
 commercial metropolis, remember — with Confederate 
 commanders preceding and following him. He would 
 probably be kindly received. You Yankees would be 
 satisfied if he was not actually insulted. Some promi- 
 nent men, politicans and officials, might set the 
 example, and he thereby, perhaps, receive a scattering 
 volley of applause. In that case, every newspaper in 
 the North would double-lead and double-ink the an- 
 nouncement. But compared with the thunders of 
 rapturous approval that would greet even the most un- 
 popular of our commanders, the recognition accorded 
 'the blue,' would not be worth noticing. 
 
 '' But this is nothing. The comparison has so many 
 dissimilar elements that it can hardly be said to prove 
 anything. It is only an abstraction, a sentiment, you 
 will say at best. Well, take the other line of contrast, 
 if you prefer. How is the Federal soldier regarded 
 by the Northern people, and the Confederate veteran 
 by the Southern populace? We starved our soldiers 
 in the field ; you furnished yours with every possible 
 luxury. But on the other hand no man's life was 
 worth a pin's fee Avith us who wagged his tongue 
 against our soldiers or the cause they sustained. 
 Invasion developed little groups of malcontents in 
 the mountains, and one nest of 'Buffaloes' on the 
 seashore. Aside from these, Lee's veterans had 
 a united people behind them till the very last 
 moment. The South was solid theh, just as it was 
 always solid before, and is likely to remain solid here- 
 after. Of course, I don't know exactly how it was 
 
146 THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 
 
 here at the North. Reports from an enemy's country 
 are never entirely reliable. It seems certain, however, 
 that there were almost as many people opposed to you in 
 the rear as in the front. Such a convention as that held 
 by the Democratic party in Chicago in 1864 ^vould have 
 been an utter impossibility at the South. There would 
 have been no need of troops, arrests or military tribu- 
 nals to prevent it. The population of any Southern 
 city w^ould have hanged such men before they had time 
 to organize. 
 
 " You fed your soldiers as you do your cattle and 
 horses, but 3^ou did not support them. You have kept up^ 
 the same system ever since, and the same difference still 
 exists between the two peoples in this respect. You 
 have pensions and homes for your soldiers, aiid schools* 
 for their children. You make an advertisement and a 
 show of them, just as you do of your paupers. We of 
 the South don't do much of this sort of thing. One or 
 two States have lately pensioned their disabled Confed- 
 erates, and we have made some more or less successful 
 efforts to get you ISTorthern people to contribute to the 
 support of our veterans. We don't boast of our chari- 
 ties, however, and don't feel like putting our soldiers 
 exactly on the level of our paupers. But w^hen it 
 comes to the question of honors and preferment we 
 never forget them. Only think of it ! You were the 
 victors and we the vanquished, but there are more Con- 
 federate than Federal soldiers in Congress and in office 
 under the government to-day ! The whole South is 
 officered from the Confederate army. Governors, Con- 
 gressmen, Senators, Judges — everybody in official posi- 
 
THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE 147 
 
 tion south of the Potomac, has the right to sport a 
 mihtary title of some sort ; it may be only corporal or 
 sergeant — we are not half so great sticklers for rank 
 as you think — but it means actual devotion to the 
 Confederate cause, and it is for that reason that they 
 are preferred. 
 
 "Our people reason of the future from the past. I 
 mean the white people, of course. No Southern man 
 includes the negro when he speaks of the Southern 
 people. Why should we ? They are no more a part of 
 our life — there is no more of identity of feeling, im- 
 pulse and sentiment between the two races than be- 
 tween a Boston blue-blood and a Chinese mandarin. 
 They happen to live side by side. That is all. Our 
 people say, and they say with reason, too, that the men 
 who fought for the South are the most likely to be 
 true to her interests now. There has never been a day 
 since the war closed that a half-hearted peace-man, or 
 one suspected of indifference to the cause of the South 
 during the war, could have been chosen to olRce by the 
 votes of the white people. As long as we let the 
 negroes have their own way such things occasionally 
 happened. Even our Mugwumps, however — or the 
 nearest approach to the Mugwump that can exist at 
 the South — must have been a faithful Confederate m 
 order to command a following. Mahone is our worst 
 sample, but nobody forgets how he used to ride into 
 battle sitting sideways on his horse as cool and inscru- 
 table under fire as he is nervous and fussy in the 
 Senate." 
 
 " If the Confederacy had succeeded do you suppose 
 
148 THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 
 
 that in twenty years it would have elected a President 
 who never smelled powder, or even uttered a word in 
 support of her cause? Do you think the South 
 would have chosen as Yice-President a man whos^ 
 public services chiefly consisted in opposition to the 
 measures designed to perpetuate its power ? The fact 
 is, the South stands by the wearers of 'the gray' 
 because they stood by it in its hour of need. The 
 North pets and pensions and patronizes and flatters the 
 wearers of ' the blue ' as if they had been mercenaries 
 hired to fight its battles, rather than representatives of 
 its thought and deserving types of its manhood. You 
 think you conciliate Southern sentiment not only by 
 such an ignoring of the men and ideas of that day, but 
 by elevating neutrals to power, and allowing " copper- 
 heads " and Confederates to dominate the government. 
 By my faith, Ben IN'athan, proud as 1 am of the men 
 who have won in peace what we could not win in 
 battle, I cannot help blushing with shame for the men 
 who permit such things to be. Only think of the 
 parade at Portland to-day, and put side by side with it 
 the statement of our old fisherman guide. He is almost 
 seventy years old, fought through the whole war, and 
 said today of the county and district in which he lives : 
 
 " It has always had from three thousand to ^ye thous- 
 and Republican majority, yet it has never sent a soldier 
 to Congress nor to either branch of the Legislature." 
 
 " I do not doubt that the old man knows whereof 
 he speaks, Ben Nathan. Do you suppose that a parallel 
 to this could be found in the South ? No, indeed, and 
 I thank God for it, too. Are we not two peoples ? 
 
THE VETEEAN AND HIS PIPE. 149 
 
 You were hardly surprised at the old fisherman's story, 
 while I could not help cursing in my heart a people so 
 mercenary and ungrateful as to prefer cowards and 
 usurers to heroes." 
 
 Somehow, Blower, my friend Raines' furious words 
 made the show at Portland seem a mockery which I 
 was almost glad to have missed. 
 
 July 10.. 1885. 
 
''THE HLTET IS IIN" THE HEAET;^ 
 
 " rrr IME is very lavish in the revenge it brings to 
 J- him whose soul is strong enough to wait." 
 So said our friend Pascal Raines, as he took from 
 its place the faded pouch made sacred by the touch of 
 love's fingers in the long ago, and pressed the per- 
 fumed flakes it held into his pipe. It was a few days 
 after the Fourth of July, and I had not yet recovered 
 from the shock which the character of its observance 
 gave me sufficiently to expect any pleasant message 
 from his lips. The truth is, Blower, that his strange 
 words, uttered the night before the I^ational holiday, 
 had been so literally confirmed by the character of its 
 observance — where it was observed at all — that I found 
 it impossible to avoid the feeling that his conclusions, 
 drawn from the facts he so clearly apprehended, 
 might also be true. So I merely said, in response to 
 his look of expectation, somewhat brusquely, too, I 
 fear: 
 
 '•Well, what now?" 
 
 Pascal Paines paused in his accustomed occupation, 
 and looked at me wath wondering eyes. I suppose my 
 face must have flushed under his scrutiny, and perhaps 
 I moved unconsciously what is left of that arm, the 
 major part of which molders back to dust under the 
 shadows of the old-field pines. 
 
 150 
 
THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 151 
 
 " Does it pain you," he asked in tones of kindly sym- 
 pathy, glancing at the empty sleeve. Before I could 
 make answer he went on : '' These old wounds are very 
 troublesome. I had to lay aside my wooden leg yes- 
 terday, and betake myself again to the crutch, as you 
 see, for no other reason in the world than that the 
 limb that is nd longer there, would persist in 
 aching." 
 
 "Yes," I assented, ''but one could endure the evil 
 better if he knew that gain had resulted to others from 
 his loss." 
 
 '' I see, Ben Nathan," said the fair-faced Southron, 
 as he took his pipe from his mouth, and glanced keenly 
 down upon me. " It is not the wounded body so much as 
 the lacerated heart that wrings your nature past tran- 
 quil endurance. I can not say that I wonder at it, but 
 you should not quarrel with fate. Because you were 
 right once, it does not follow that you always will be. 
 I am not sure that it even raises a presumption that 
 you will ever be again. I am inclined to think that, as 
 a rule, the man who is thoroughly and earnestly right 
 upon one subject, can be pretty certainly counted on to 
 be wrong on every other. This is even more generally 
 true of times and peoples than of individuals. To-day 
 may be right in one direction, but to-morrow is almost 
 sure to have to rectify its blunders in others. You are 
 sore because your old Fourth of July is dead." 
 
 "It is not dead ! " I cried vehemently. " At least 
 the spirit, the sentiment of reverent patriotism that 
 underlay it, is not dead. You may speculate about it 
 as you please, but I still insist that patriotism is the 
 
152 THE VETEEAN AND HIS PIPE. 
 
 grand passion of the American people, and love of lib- 
 erty the very breath of their nostrils.'^ 
 
 "I do not know that I would care to deny your 
 words, Ben ]N"athan," he answered after a moment's 
 thoughtful pause. " Patriotism, of some sort is sure to 
 be an element of American life, simply because it is 
 American. The American type of man must grow 
 more fixed and assertive year by year. We shall soon 
 cease to ask the world's permission to be what we are 
 Or what we choose to become. We shall measure our- 
 selves, our opportunities, our duties, and our methods 
 by our own standards. The unit of comparison will 
 be of our own determining. Instead of trying to adapt 
 ourselves to the standard by which the lives of other 
 lands are measured, we shall become more and more a 
 law unto ourselves. Patriotism — in its broadest signifi- 
 cance — is nothing more nor less than the assertion of 
 national distinctiveness. ' Our country, right or wrong', 
 is a very good embodiment of this idea ; and the greater 
 the wrong it represents, the more admirable, very 
 frequently, seems the patriotism that upholds it. We 
 need not go beyond our own experience to exemplify 
 this. We have seen the right and the wrong pitted 
 against each other ; and can bear witness that the 
 patriotism which maintained the wrong is to-day ac- 
 counted the equivalent, or, perhaps a little more than 
 the equivalent, of that which gave victory to the right. 
 Take us two, for example. My wooden leg is a badge 
 of honor, recognized and accepted as an indubitable 
 certificate of patriotism everywhere. My own people 
 applaud the act of which it is a consequence, while yours 
 
THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 153 
 
 freely and gladly account it evidence of a sincerity 
 which excuses error. Yet it is only a symbol of devotion 
 to the wrong — a demonstration of bad judgment or an 
 evil purpose. It simply shows that I stuck to what I 
 accepted as my country, even when it was grossly and 
 palpably in the wrong. 
 
 " On the other hand your empty sleeve shows that 
 the heart beneath it beat warm with devotion — not to 
 a ' country right or wrong,' but to a country which in 
 that struggle was most emphatically right. Yet, in no 
 part of the country, is your memento of wars' savagery 
 accounted an evidence of a greater or a purer patriot- 
 ism than the vacancy which Yankee bullets left among 
 my members. My style of patriotism — a mere readi- 
 ness to assert and maintain national distinctiveness — 
 we shall always have with us. It is not a very rare 
 sort of virtue. Tyrants often have it. Even slaves 
 sometimes possess it. But what you call patriotism — 
 what you meant by the word when you used it just 
 now — - is an entirely different thing. Patriotism, to 
 your mind, is a curious Janatical adoration of the idea 
 of the country — our country, let us say — as the em- 
 bodiment of universal equity and benevolence. I 
 fought for the Confederacy because it w^as my country, 
 or I thought it was. I thought it right, but I should 
 have done just the same if I had known it to be \^^ong. 
 You sustained the Union cause because vou thoug-ht it 
 right. The fact that it was ijour country had very 
 little to do with it. In truth, I rather think it 
 was a drawback on your zeal. You regarded the 
 overthrow of the rebellion as the cause of human 
 
154 THE VETEKAN AND HIS PIPE. 
 
 freedom, of universal liberty, a sort of harbinger of 
 the millennium. 
 
 " So, too, with your idea of liberty. It does not 
 mean collective liberty — national independence, the 
 autocracy of the mass — but individual right and per- 
 sonal privilege. You have outgrown the original idea 
 of our national existence ; or rather, have grafted 
 upon it every new phase of aspiration for humanit}^, 
 which that vague something you are so fond of calling 
 progress, has generated in your kindly enthusiasm. 
 Your ideas of liberty and patriotism are so commingled 
 and confused that you do not realize that there can be 
 such a thing as love of country without the deification 
 of right and the consecration of power to the cause 
 of universal freedom and equality of privilege." 
 
 I could not deny these things, Blower, though I had 
 never thought of them in that way before. I suppose 
 my doubt, for I was in doubt, where this speculation 
 might lead, must have shown itself in my face, for 
 there was a touch of sympathy in Kaines' voice as he 
 came over and laid his hand upon my shoulder while he 
 continued : 
 
 " I don't mean to be cruel, Ben Nathan, but we 
 have been friends long enough to speak plainly, and 
 are old enough to look facts in the face without shrink- 
 ing. I only speak of things as they appear to my 
 apprehension. My point of view is not the same as 
 yours, and our ideas ma}^ never quite converge. I may 
 be wrong and you may be right, as you were in the old 
 time. But if we are ever to find out the right and 
 eliminate the wrong, it is necessary that you should 
 
THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 155 
 
 know my thought and that I should realize your con- 
 viction. And what is true of us as individuals is true 
 of all our respective counterparts among our fellow 
 citizens. The chief difference between them and us is 
 that our mutual reg-ard is a link foro-ed in the white 
 heat of deadly strife, which only proved un worthiness 
 can ever break. If it is hard for us to understand and 
 tolerate each other's notions, even during our few days 
 of annual foregathering, how vast must be the chasm 
 which separates the peoples of which we are but types 
 — a chasm not filled Avith blood nor the ' results of 
 Avar,' but the mere neutral distance betAA'een distinct 
 and dissimilar crystallizations. 
 
 '' I was in a factory, the other day, and saw tAvo 
 smiths grasp each an end of a glowing bar of iron, and 
 begin to ply their hammers each on the end nearest 
 him. The ends were alike at first. They rested on 
 the same anvil, and Av^ere never AvhoUy separated, but in 
 a short time the one became crooked and the other 
 straight — the one round and the other flat. They were 
 parts of a common AAdiole, l)ut if separated each Avould 
 still remain in itself complete. Such is our national 
 life. It has been shaped Avith different hammers. The 
 Avisdom of that ' one matchless among forty millions,' 
 as a great Confederate has recently Avritten, Avas based 
 on a subtler yet more stubborn truth than he himself 
 perceived, Avhen he declared that the Nation 'must be 
 all free or all slave.' The forms of society to Avhich he 
 referred have been assimilated by the extinction of one 
 of them, but the life AA^hich each had shaped remains. 
 The slave-shaped civilization — nay, I Avill not say the 
 
156 THE VETEKAN AND HIS PIPE. 
 
 slave-shaped civilization, for to do so is but to perpet- 
 uate the common error ; let us rather saj that civiliza- 
 tion of which slavery was so long a conspicuous 
 element — yet remains. It can no more be suddenly 
 extir])ated than the people whose every sentiment has 
 been molded by its influences. 
 
 All the conditions of that civilization remain, save 
 only the one accident of involuntary servitude. It is not 
 easily changed because it is, to a great degree, impene- 
 trable by external influences, l^early one-third of its 
 white population is shut out from all influence which the 
 world's thought might exert upon them, by the fact. of 
 absolute illiteracy. Practically, not far from one-half 
 even of this element of her population, are as safe from 
 the contamination of ideas derived from the printed 
 page, as if the cabalistic art had never been invented. 
 Such people do not change, save by the imperceptible 
 attrition of ages. The current of their lives can not 
 be broadened or accelerated, except drop by drop. No 
 great tributary can join it, no sudden tide overwhelm 
 it, because it can neither absorb another life, nor 
 readily assimilate itself to new conditions. What it 
 was when Lincoln uttered his famous aphorism, it still 
 substantially remains, and must remain, until forces 
 yet undeveloped, acting upon generations, yet unborn, 
 shall either transform or disintegrate and destroy." 
 
 " But this fact is as nothing when compared with 
 that one other overwhelming fact of our Southern life 
 — the fact that the conditions which in its later years 
 induced our best men to believe shavery an absolute 
 necessity, still confront us in constantly iilcreasing 
 
THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 157 
 
 gravity. The fact that a man is black is nothing to 
 you. Upon the average the people living north of the 
 Ohio river do not see a black face once a month. To 
 us who dwell south of it there is no fact more terrible. 
 It is our sphinx which constantly confronts us with the 
 unsolved query, " What shall we do with him ? " Per- 
 haps we ought more properly to ask what will he do 
 with himself, and what can our children do with them- 
 selves? You of the North are just beginning to under- 
 stand that this is one of the most terrible problems of 
 the ages. We of the South have solved it for ourselves, 
 and in our own way. We have determined that 
 change can not come — sTiall not come ! 
 
 "Do not tell me that this is the old plea which 
 slavery put forth for its own preservation. The old 
 cry of ' Let us alone ! ' was something more than a mere 
 political slogan. It was the instinct and genius of a 
 people anxious to avert a danger that has hourly 
 grown more imminent and terrible ever since. Your 
 ancient Puritan rage for individual right blinded the 
 eyes of the people of the N^orth to the fact that we 
 acted only from the impulse of self-preservation. The 
 South, as a people, does not wish to oppress or injure the 
 colored man, either individually or collectively consid- 
 ered ; but we stand face to face with the alternative of 
 repression or surrender. We must prevent the colored 
 man from exercising the power which your humanita- 
 rian zeal for the individual and curious disregard of 
 the aggregate, bestowed upon him, or yield ourselves 
 to his dominion — if not to-day^ certainly in a very near 
 future. 
 
158 THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 
 
 "We can not assimilate the black man. We can 
 not destroy him. Do you wonder that we have deter- 
 mined to rule, control, and forever subordinate him? 
 Necessity is the highest law. You made it your 
 strongest plea for overriding the letter of the Consti- 
 tution. It was a good one, too, based on that logic 
 which no subtlety can answer. It is beyond even the 
 ' higher law,' since it is not based on theory, but graven 
 on the marble tables of fact, which make up the life of 
 to-day. The decision which the South has made upon 
 this question rests upon immutable necessity. If it 
 conflicts with the formal law you gave us, we can not 
 help it. You should have known the life for which 
 you legislated, before you sowed to the wind and left 
 us to reap the whirlwind ! . 
 
 " Until of late we have feared that the ancient sen- 
 timentalism in the IS^orth might give us trouble in the 
 future. I confess, Ben Nathan, tliat my fear of this 
 was not wholly removed until, with my own eyes, I 
 witnessed your Fourth of July. Now I am constrained 
 to tell you that there is no ground for apprehension. 
 The patriotism and love of liberty which inspired your 
 action — ^which make up yom^ ideal of a free country 
 worthy of the sacrifice of blood — is no longer an 
 active force- among your countrymen, and will not be 
 again for some generations. We shall manage the negro 
 at the South as we choose, because the impulse of lib- 
 eration and amelioration has spent its force, and for 
 many years to come will lie dormant. 
 
 " ' How do I know it ? ' ' Out of the abundance of 
 the heart the mouth speaketh.' I visited three great 
 
THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 159 
 
 cities on tiie Fourtn of July, Ben N^athan. ] saw ban- 
 ners and crowds. Curious multitudes flocked in and 
 out in a feverish thirst for some new pleasure — some 
 untried sensation But nowhere did I hear one word 
 of reference to ' Freedom and the Eight.' Since then 
 I have noted the reports of the day's observance. 
 Here is one from a city of two hundred thousand 
 inhabitants — the city from which the President of the 
 United States was chosen. 
 
 ' There was no assemblage of citizens to . celebrate 
 the day, and so far as can be learned the Declaration 
 of Independence was not read in the city.' 
 
 " Here is another from a Western City : 
 
 Tor the first time we had a Fourth of July without 
 fuss or feathers. There were no parades, no speeches, 
 no fire-works, and consequently no fires.' You see, 
 Ben ]N'athan, the interests of the insurance companies 
 outweigh the impulse of what you call patriotism. 
 
 " To make assurance doubly sure, I sent out one 
 hundred letters of inquiry to different towns in various 
 Northern States. In hut three of these towns was the 
 Declaration of Independence read or the day celebrated 
 as a patriotic festival ! 
 
 " One of the answers to n\j inquiries will give you 
 an idea of the whole : ' Our people went to picnics, 
 base-ball matches, and a circus. A little company who 
 might, perhaps, be termed the- elite, had a clam-bake. 
 If a word was said about the country or the day by 
 any of this company, it was clam et secrete.'' You 
 may guess from the flippant jest how far this 
 happened from the ' Cradle of Liberty.' Your ancient 
 
160 THE- VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 
 
 patriotism is now accounted worthy only to point a 
 classic pun ! 
 
 ''Another answers : ' We had flags and firecrackers, 
 of course ; a horse-race, a foot-race, and a swimming- 
 race. There were no speeches, no assemblage with any 
 patriotic purpose, and I heard no allusion to either 
 grace or gioiy.' 
 
 " Let me say one word more, Ben I^athan. I trav- 
 eled more than a hundred miles that day, and judge 
 that I saw somewhere near a half million of 3^our 
 Northern people, but I did not hear one syllable of 
 patriotic song. I did hear a company of Italians play- 
 ing the ' Star Spangled Banner,' followed immediately 
 by ' Dixie,' and from a skating-rink at night I heard a 
 band playing 'John Brown !' 
 
 " There is no longer any doubt, Ben Nathan, in my 
 mind. The spirit of the North will never interfere with 
 the Southern idea of necessity, no matter what may be 
 the course it takes. We are rid, finally and forever, of 
 " Northern interference in Southern affairs." We 
 can do with " our niggers " as we like. That is why I 
 spoke of time's revenges. We have waited, steadfast 
 and unchanging. Where we stood a quarter of a 
 century ago, in principle we stand to-day. Our con- 
 queror has changed and is changing. After many 
 years we see the principle for which we fought — 
 the notion that we must be let alone to do as we 
 choose with the colored man — if not admitted by 
 the North, at least tacitly and willingly allowed. You 
 may grieve at the fact, Ben Nathan, but we have noth- 
 ing to fear from the spirit of a nation which has prac- 
 
THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 1(51 
 
 tically abandoned the contemplation of past achieve- 
 ments, forgotten its National anthems, and has nothing 
 better to do on its birthday than to seek amusement 
 practice gluttony, and boast of its wealth." 
 
 July 17, 1885. 
 
 11 
 
TYPES AND LANDMARKS, 
 
 THIS has been a notable day to the children of the 
 little hamlet where we liave fled to escape from 
 the summer heats, Blower. All day long the creaking 
 monotony of a hand organ's notes have been heard, 
 first upon one side and then upon the other, of the lit- 
 tle stream which divides the village, with an impar- 
 tiality which only the utmost pertinacity could compass. 
 All day long the placid bosom of the lake has echoed 
 back the ear-afflicting strains, and all day long the vil- 
 lage infantry — the rank and file of to-morrow's mighty 
 host — have paraded up and down and back and forth, 
 as escort for the red-coated quadrumane which served 
 as fare-collector for the able-bodied musician who offi- 
 ciated at the crank. As the sun neared its setting, the 
 storm clouds rose above the horizon, and the thunder 
 rolled its magnificent bass among the sun-gilded peaks. 
 The vagrant bundled his frightened, jabbering monkey 
 under his arm, and fled for shelter just as the first 
 great drops fell hissing and bubbling into the troubled 
 waters of the lake. 
 
 " I suppose," I said to Pascal Raines, as the black- 
 browed Italian went scurrying by, " you may discover 
 even in this peripatetic vendor of congealed harmonies, 
 another evidence of the radical unlikeness of IS'orthern 
 and Southern life." 
 
 162 
 
THE YETEUAN AND HIS PIPE. 163 
 
 * He smiled good-humorecllj as he watched the 
 heavy-laden fugitive, and said : 
 
 "It is at least an evidence of patient forbearance 
 and long-suffering on the part of our Southern people 
 that they peacefully endure even such representative 
 products of your Northern life. They help to give us 
 an idea of your population, however, and make us con- 
 tent 'to bear the evils that we have rather than fly 
 to others that we know not of.' This man is one of the 
 standard types from which the average Southern man 
 judges the people of the North. The teacher of negro 
 schools and the Jewish merchant are two more. He 
 takes them all as sample elements and is duly grateful 
 that, instead of these, he has only the negro and the 
 ' poor white ' to vex his soul with insoluble problems. 
 
 ''But, seriously, Ben ]^athan, I was just saying to 
 myself when you disturbed my reverie, what a pity it 
 is that we have not some great national lyric, pulsating 
 with thoughts as grand as those for which you fought, 
 which might touch a common chord in the hearts of all 
 our people — an anthem of the new world's life which 
 should fuse and unify its contrasted elements into one 
 harmonious whole. I wish we might have a national 
 air so potent that it would stir every heart with patri- 
 otic impulse, and so popular that no man would dare 
 even to carry about a hand-organ that w^s not attuned 
 to its harmonies." 
 
 " I am sure," I said, " we have no lack of patriotic 
 songs. That we have no anthem of such scope, 
 grandeur and originality as you desire is probably 
 due, in great part, to the fact that we are not a 
 
164: THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 
 
 musical or especially poetical people. We of the North 
 would seem to be too busy, and you of the South are 
 — I will not say too indolent, though such is the gen- 
 eral Northern estimate of your characteristics — but I 
 may at least say that you are not given to strong orig- 
 inal work, whether in literature, art, or mechanics. I 
 suppose that when we reach that stage of artistic devel- 
 opment which so many of our esthetic and critical 
 friends are sighing for, the land will be so full of har- 
 monies that we shall lisp in poetic numbers, and our 
 patriotism clothe itself in spontaneous song." 
 
 " It is well enough for you to laugh, Ben Nathan. 
 So far as I can see, there is nothing in the near future 
 to trouble the Northern man. He has but to laug-h and 
 grow rich, if not fat. Indeed, he has grown rich with 
 such wonderful ease and in defiance of so many estab- 
 lished maxims of the world's precedent life, that he 
 has come to scorn all things except the luck he wor- 
 ships. I suppose that is one reason why the religious 
 element has died out of his political philosophy, and 
 his patriotism has come to be merely a struggle for 
 spoils, or an endeavor to gain personal advantage from 
 public necessity. With us of the South it is different. 
 Over Its hangs the sword of Damocles. Turn whatever 
 way we may there is danger. Two races confront each 
 other on our soil Avho are rapidly approaching parity 
 of numbers and theoretical equality of power. They 
 stand face to face all over the land. Every roof 
 almost, shelters representatives of both. They are 
 mingled in every household, and yet separated by 
 infinite distance. They differ radically in development, 
 
THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 165 
 
 tradition, and aspiration. The one aspires to an equal- 
 ity of right and power which the other would rather 
 perish than accord. To me the situation seems full of 
 peril, but my countrymen laugh at my apprehensions- 
 I know that the new-born race has put its foot upon 
 the lowest rung of the ladder of development, and no 
 power can stay its upward course. My brave compa- 
 triots scorn the notion that they must enter the lists 
 with those who were yesterday their slaves. 'The 
 white man must and will rule the South,' they declare, 
 with a confidence which recent history has done very 
 much to strengthen. ' If there were a thousand negroes 
 to one white man,' said one who but yesterday repre- 
 sented one of our states in the National councils, ' it 
 must still remain the same. The white man would still 
 rule.' 
 
 " You of the North, Ben Nathan, look upon these 
 things as cooly as you scan the fluctuations of the mar- 
 ket. Southern sentiment, to you, is only whimsical 
 gasconade. You laughed at the threat of disunion. It 
 took three hundred and seventy -five thousand lives and 
 three billion dollars to pay for your foolish levity. 
 You mocked at Southern sentiment, and sought to 
 thrust the freedman as an actual factor into our polit- 
 ical life. We were a conquered people. The flags of a 
 victorious enemy were flaunting in our faces. Yet 
 to-day we rule the South as undisputedly as when the 
 stars and bars floated over our embattled hosts. Nay, 
 more, the people whose sentiments your Northern phi- 
 losophy has been taught by the predominance of the 
 mercenary impulse in your own life, to regard with 
 
166 THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 
 
 scorn, impelled by those very sentiments, have won a 
 predominance in the National Government which they 
 never before enjoyed, which they hold in defiance of 
 the principles for which you fought, and which, for a 
 score of years, you have foolishly boasted of having 
 wrought into the warp and woof of our government. 
 
 " So far as I can see, this does not affect the price 
 of a bushel of corn nor the value of a day's work at the 
 North. In your present state of mind, therefore, you 
 are profoundly indifferent as to the result. Whether 
 the nation is wholly republican or partly oligarchical, 
 is a question that does not greatly disturb you, as long 
 as the political organisms of which you constitute a 
 part, are situated in that portion where ihe democratic 
 principle prevails. The fervor of devotion to human 
 right because of the mere fact of humanity, has pretty 
 much burned itself out in your hearts. Your sham en- 
 franchisement of the negro has satisfied your vanity 
 and allowed you to make easy terms with that 
 conscience which once underlay your patriotism. 
 
 " I used to count your fierce humanitarian zeal as sheer 
 hypocrisy, as the great majority of my country -men 
 believe it to have been to-day. I suppose I should 
 have remained of that opinion if it had not been for the 
 character of your patriotic songs. They satisfied me 
 of your sincerity. I learned from them that your zeal 
 for human freedom was something more than a mere 
 pretense ; that it was, in fact, a real principle, a 
 controlling motive. In the same way, the absence of 
 such songs, the unfamiliarity of such ideas among your 
 people at the present time, has taught me that what 
 
THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 167 
 
 was a motive in the life of yesterday has ceased to be 
 more than a false pretense in the tliought of to-day. 
 Yesterday the slave's liberty was a cause for which 
 thousands of your best were glad to die. To-day the 
 freedman's right, on which his liberty, the nation's 
 honor, and the future's peace depend, is a subject not 
 Avorthy of a moment's consideration by the meanest 
 among your number. 
 
 " Why do I apprehend any trouble because of the 
 numerical strength of the colored race at the South ? 
 
 " Oh, that has no relation to Northern action or 
 sentiment. You will remain utterly apathetic under 
 any sort of wrong that may be inflicted" on the negro, 
 unless some leader's thwarted ambition should seek to 
 make it a battle-cry in some future conflict. This is 
 not veiy probable since tlie fruit of such an attempt 
 would not be likely to ripen in time for him to gather. 
 The soil is not so congenial as it was in j^our young- 
 days, and there is no danger that Xorthern greed may 
 be shut out of fair western fields by the oppression of 
 the negro in South Carolina. No, no, Ben Xathan ; what 
 makes it a serious matter, for us primarily and for the 
 country secondarily, is not what the Xcrth may see fit 
 to do or to attempt on the colored man's behalf, but 
 what he may do or attempt to do himself — Avhat he 
 may provoke us to do or attempt to do, to maintain 
 Avhat we beheve to be not only our right, but an abso- 
 lute and imperative necessity. You see, Ben ^N^athan, 
 the conditions which surround the two peoples thus 
 strangely united, but not in any sense conjoined, are 
 not identical nor even similar. It is because I see this 
 
168 THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 
 
 SO clearl}^ that I wish we might have a National song 
 that should nourish a common sentiment." 
 
 I shook my head with a smile, despite his serious- 
 ness and said : 
 
 " I do not think the American people are of so mer- 
 curial a- temper as to be brought into harmonious rela- 
 tions by ' the concourse of sweet sounds.' You of the 
 South, with your more ardent temperament and whim- 
 sical ideas of chivalry and honor, may be impressible 
 by the minstrel's art. But we of the Nortli are too 
 staid and practical — too busy and too cold — to be 
 subject in any great degree, to such influences. We 
 are neither musical nor sentimental. There is this one 
 point in which you might well draw a distinction 
 between the two peoples." 
 
 I spoke with the complacency which an utter lack 
 of doubt produces. Pascal Eaines looked at me 
 for a moment in surprise. Then he threw his long- 
 stemmed pipe across the room breaking the bowl into a 
 thousand pieces, swung his one leg upon the edge of the 
 table, and laughed as I had never heard him in all our 
 long acquaintance. 
 
 " Thomas Ben Nathan ! " he cried at length, pant- 
 ing still with laughter and wiping away the tears 
 it had brought to his eyes. ''You will certainh^ be 
 answerable for my death at no distant day ! Is it 
 possible that even your eyes are blinded with the 
 whimsical tradition that the South is of a lighter, more 
 ardent and mercurial temperament than the people of 
 the North ? I knew that was the impression of your 
 countrymen. It has even been used by your historians 
 
THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 169 
 
 to account for certain fancied differences between our 
 respective armies. They talk of J^orthern pluck and 
 obstinacy and of Southern dash and impetuosity. Bah ! 
 If there was any such distinction between the soldiery 
 the terms should be reversed. The crowning instance 
 of obstinate endurance in the whole conflict was the de- 
 fense of Petersburg, on half rations for ten montlis, 
 against a force three times as great as our own, and with- 
 out the shadow of a hope of success. You who were 
 with our opponents — well fed, comfortably housed, and 
 lavishly clothed and supplied — you thought that winter's 
 task was hard enough. Our old fisherman friend tells us 
 almost every day that he has ' never been the same man 
 since,' and I do not doubt that he is correct. But what 
 would you say if your memory could paint the scenes 
 upon the other side of those works ! Clothes, shoes, 
 food — we had not enough of anything! Enough, did 
 I say ? We only had as little of all as human life could 
 be maintained upon ! A hundred times have I seen 
 those who stayed in the bombproofs stripped almost to 
 nakedness to furnish clothing for those who went upon 
 the picket lines! And yet you go on maundering 
 about l^orthern pluck and Southern dash, as if obstinate 
 endurance was a purely IS^'orthern attribute and fiery 
 dash a distinctively Southern characteristic ! " 
 
 " The fact is, Ben E'athan, that you are the light 
 mercurial element of our people, and we the staid and 
 serious part of the population. You are prattling, tat- 
 tling, song-loving, self-complacent sentimentalists. We 
 wear the 'inky cloak' of habitual seriousness, if not 
 despondency. You are always singing — sense or non- 
 
170 THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 
 
 sense, as the case may be. Outside of our religious 
 hymnology, which, by the way, has a decided inclina- 
 tion to the sad and grave, w^e have hardly anything like 
 popular songs. Outside the parlor and the church, it 
 may be said, that the white man of the South very 
 rarely sings. The negro does our singing and the big- 
 ger part of our jollity for us. On the contrary, you of 
 the North are always singing. Look at your Presi- 
 dential elections ! Think of the thousands who tramped 
 all over the North singing the absurdest, most ridicu- 
 lous sort of clamatory nonsense ever devised. I saw 
 two of the monster ' business men's parades ' in New 
 York. Bedlam could not have turned out more ab- 
 surdity or more senseless song. The Southern man may 
 yell, whoop, perform ridiculous antics, and rival a Com- 
 manche in threatening or scornful grimace, but he can- 
 not sing, or at least does not and will not sing. You 
 of the North are the great song-lovers of the world, 
 and always have been." 
 
 It was now my turn to be surprised. I was very in- 
 credulous, however, and said almost in derision of his 
 idea: 
 
 " Our songs, at least our patriotic songs, must have 
 been very poor or have exerted very little influence 
 upon the country." 
 
 "On the contrary, Ben Nathan, the patriotic hym- 
 nology of the North has been the very best the world 
 has ever known, and its influence upon the country's 
 history has been simply tremendous. Even in the war 
 your songs were of more advantage to you than your 
 undoubted superiority in artillery. I could tell you of 
 
THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 171 
 
 a scene I witnessed in those days which would perhaps 
 make you prize more higlily the songs you have for- 
 gotten to teach your children to sing. What was it ? 
 Don't ask me. I dislike to think of it. Yet you ought 
 to know it, Ben Xathan, you and all 3^our self -deceiving 
 generation of sill}^ sentimentalists. You ought to learn 
 that your strength as a people is not in money or ma- 
 terial achievement, but in that moral purpose which 
 differentiates the life of the Xorth from all the other 
 peoples of the earth. Yes, I will tell it to you some 
 time. But now the storm has passed. A soft, cool 
 breeze from the west foretells a quiet morning, smooth 
 water and voracious fish. We must be on the lake by 
 daylight, 
 
 That I, with wings as swift 
 
 As meditation or the thoughts of love 
 
 May sweep to my revenge ! 
 
 " To-day's ill-luck must be retrieved. The veriest tyro 
 can see the signs of the morrow's triumph. We shall 
 need steady hands and fresh hearts at dawn. So now 
 to bed, to dream of humming reel and glistening scales. 
 Some other time I will discourse to you of these things 
 of which you have right good reason to be proud." 
 
 July 24, 1885. 
 
''WITH DEUM-BEAT Al^I) HEAET- 
 
 beat;^ 
 
 YOU must needs pardon me, old friend. I find no 
 solace in your charms to-day. For once, your fra- 
 grance hath no consolation for ni}^ pain. The soft blue 
 billows that rise above your shining bowl are full of sad, 
 sweet visions, that bring crow^ding memories of the 
 years when we were at the front of life's great battle. 
 The salt tears that race down my cheeks make your 
 amber mouth-piece bitter to my lips. It is in vain that 
 I wipe them away. They only come the faster — 
 strange drops of grief which time has treasured for this 
 hour of woe. 
 
 One lieth dead whose name brings up the story of 
 that past which gilds the brightest pages of the Nation's 
 glory. That silent, firm-lipped man whom we first saw 
 through the chill morning haze at Donelson ; whose 
 look of doo-cred resolution fixed itself forever in our 
 memory as he limped past us when we lay waiting the 
 surgeon's care at Shiloh ; whose self-forgetful exulta- 
 tion showed itself only in a strange brightness of eye 
 and lightness of speech, as he led us almost gaily, from 
 the river's brink over the deep-gullied hills and scraggy 
 oak openings, up to the conquest of Yicksburg — this 
 man of men, the foremost of an age when giants 
 abounded in our Western world — is dead ! 
 
 So says the world. To us. Blower, the message 
 173 
 
THE VETEEAN AND HIS PIPE. 173 
 
 that clothes the land in mourning is not true. It never 
 will be true, because we never can forget. We may 
 cease to note the empty sleeve, but the heart above 
 which it is folded will never forget the young leader — 
 the first to whom we touched visor in the hour of victory. 
 We shall remember him always as he looked when 
 the sunshine of triumph flashed over his face while he 
 watched from Orchard Knob the execution of the 
 order that hurled the long blue lines against the slope 
 of Mission Ridge, when the prescribed limits of assault 
 were overpassed and he beheld a hundred gaily flaunt- 
 ing battle-flags, gleaming bright against the gray decliv- 
 ity, leap upward in gallant rivalry toward the flame-lit 
 crest on which, almost ere one might count their num- 
 ber, they were in quick succession planted, while the 
 fleeing enemy sought shelter in the circling forest and 
 the shadows of the swift descending night. 
 
 A myriad of other memories come back to us — 
 memories long accounted precious, sacred now to the 
 heroic dead — memories not merely of those great events 
 which made up the mighty current of his life, but of 
 lesser happenings when our humble fortunes touched 
 the orbit of his destiny. How we prize that last me- 
 mento of his manfulness and woe, penned with trem- 
 bling hand but unfaltering heart, in those last days 
 when misfortunes came to show by crucial test the 
 temper of his soul. Such memories are for us, Blower, 
 too holy for the cold world's eye, too sad for those who 
 loved him as he deserved. Dark, indeed, were those 
 later days, to them that shared his agony, but rich in 
 a golden setting of his fame. 
 
174 THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 
 
 He who fought so manfully for others, in that 
 wondrous past of Av^hich he was so great a part, has 
 gone to swell the ranks of the immortals, with the 
 fragrance of heroic fortitude, clinging forever to his • 
 name. While he " languishing did hve" we wept in 
 sorrow for his pain. Now that he is released, from the 
 woes of earth, we still weep — not for him, Blower, but 
 for the Nation that has lost the simple minded soldier, 
 the brave, true-hearted man, whose worth it only now 
 begins to know. His grand achievements, by himself 
 so simply told, make the most eloquent eulogium seem 
 weak. 
 
 What shall we say of him that others have not 
 better said ? The story of his triumphs is his country's 
 history in her noblest epoch. 
 
 As a leader he was our greatest because he served 
 most self-forget fully. We knew he was with us because 
 he was of us. No private in the ranks was more rigor- 
 ously observant of discipline ; none so unremittingly 
 devoted to duty. He led most successfully because he 
 served most zealously. 
 
 His table and his tent were scarce more sumptuous 
 than those that fell to our own lot. He abstained from 
 luxury, not to encourage his soldiers to do likewise, but 
 because he was himself a soldier, and luxury comported 
 not with the performance of a soldier's duty. 
 
 He shared the sunshine and the storm, the heat and 
 cold, privation and fatigue, not from any vainglorious 
 desire to be counted an exemplar, still less with the 
 shallow ambition of seeking the favor of those he com- 
 manded, but simply because it was a soldier's place, his 
 
THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 175 
 
 calling, and his duty, to serve faithfully and endure 
 cheerfully. 
 
 He never encountered insubordination because he 
 sought only to promote the general welfare. He was 
 more anxious for the success of the cause for which he 
 fought than greedy of the glory of achievement. 
 
 He never asked more faithful service than he ren- 
 dered, and, while chary of blame, never forgot to 
 render praise when merited. 
 
 'Not doubtful of his own conclusions he could listen 
 patiently to others, and yield his conviction to the con- 
 current opinion of trusted subordinates. 
 
 No word of boastfulness ever crossed his lips.- His 
 modesty forbade exultation even in the moment of 
 victory. No sneer at any rival's ill-success left its stain 
 upon his memory. 
 
 ' His pity for the unfortunate found expression in 
 deeds rather than words. He checked the shoat of 
 triumph lest the hearts of the vanquished should be 
 wrung by its echo. 
 
 Prizing only achievement as the foundation of fame, 
 he never mocked at another's failure. 
 
 Even when he yielded to the advice of others he 
 never shirked responsibility of success or failure. H 
 success resulted, he never claimed the merit of its sug- 
 gestion ; if failure, he never sought to shift the blame 
 upon another. 
 
 His self-forgetfulness was so profound that he 
 ascribed his own success to opportunity rather than 
 merit ; his modesty so great, that the humblest of his 
 
1Y6 THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 
 
 subalterns excelled him in exultant pride in the vic- 
 tories he achieved. 
 
 He was more jealous of the fame of others than of 
 his own renown. To depreciate those who executed 
 his commands he counted worse than an affront to 
 himself ; slow to repel calumny or insinuation he was 
 quick to defend or excuse a subordinate when unjustly 
 assailed. 
 
 He had so little envy in his nature that he felt no 
 shadow of distrust of those on whose faithfulness he 
 relied for success. He never found it necessary to be- 
 little their achievement in order to magnify his own, 
 nor did he ever seek for exaltation through another's 
 downfall. Upon tried subordinates he rested with 
 unfaltering faith, even doubting of his own success 
 without their aid. 
 
 He never measured his desert by others' merits. 
 Accomplished facts were his only criterion of capacity. 
 Scrupulous in the performance of duty, he never sought 
 to outdo others. His modest reticence put to the 
 blush all clamorous exultation. 
 
 As a commander, he was chary of promises of 
 victory but rich in the fulfillment of hopes too briglit 
 for any but the most sanguine patriot to cherish. He 
 never sought to repair the fact of error with excuse, 
 nor shirked the responsibility of failure, l^either the 
 injustice of a supeiiior nor the slanderous malevolence 
 of one apprehensive of his rivalry, could wring from 
 him a word that might impair the country's confidence 
 in those that led, or add a feather's Aveight to the bur- 
 den of responsibility they bore. When the time had 
 
THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 177 
 
 passed in which his words might be productive of harm 
 he was too magnanimous to cast any imputation on the 
 dead. Who else would have rested without protest 
 under slanderous aspersion for a score of years ? 
 
 He felt so honored by the country's preference that 
 it seemed to him almost a wrong to speak in derogation 
 of one who served her well, even in defense of his own 
 fame. 
 
 The foremost figure of a mighty conflict, standing 
 in the very vortex where envy jostles with renown, he 
 felt no jealousy with regard to his own fame, nor any 
 desire to pluck a leaf from the chaplet of another. 
 
 Without being indifferent to his own achievements 
 he was more scrupulous of the fame of a subordinate 
 than of his own. 
 
 So chary was he of censure that the closest friends 
 heard no words of detraction from his lips which need 
 now be forgotten. 
 
 So pure his purpose that he never deemed it needful 
 to utter words of explanation or defense. So faithful 
 to his duty that he never sought excuse by alleging 
 another's dereliction. 
 
 If we speak of him as a man we but touch the key- 
 note of his public life. He was simple, trusting, faith- 
 ful, and sincere. Counting his virtues nothing ; seeking 
 extenuation for no fault ; accepting fortune with com- 
 posure, and meeting the sorest evils without murmur- 
 ing. 
 
 Loving his own so unobtrusively as never once to 
 think them exalted by his merit. 
 
 So faithful to a friend that even in the heat and 
 12 
 
178 THE VETEKAN AND HIS PIPE. 
 
 shame of inexcusable betrayal be uttered no word of 
 censure, syllabled no reproach. 
 
 Betrayed by those he trusted, he sought no 
 revenge and uttered no denunciation. 
 
 Covered with obloquy because of another's wrong, 
 he shirked not the reproach attaching to the shame of 
 his subordinate. 
 
 When the world echoed with taunt and jeer because 
 he had not fathomed almost unfathomable deceit, he 
 uttered no cry, thought not of his own, but silently 
 addressed himself to the hopeless task of reparation, 
 while his great heart was slowly eaten out with grief 
 for others' loss. 
 
 So pure was he in heart that his lips never uttered 
 a word that might bring a blush to the chastest maiden's 
 cheek. 
 
 So unassuring, that he never distrusted words of 
 praise. So kindlv in his nature, that he quite forgot 
 to vaunt his deeds of charity. So righteous in his 
 judgment that the bitterest detraction could not influ- 
 ence him to withhold a merited reward. So gentle, that 
 the humblest feared not to approach his presence. So 
 just, that with him the right of the lowliest was secure 
 against the highest. 
 
 So true to those he loved, that he wondered how any 
 man could be false. So single-minded, that his adver- 
 saries never fathomed his real motives. So heedful of 
 the rights of others, as to peril his own through failure 
 to assert them. So modest in deportment, that lack of 
 ceremony never gave offense. 
 
 Never questioning those he trusted, even to the last 
 
THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 179 
 
 lie suffered from a betrayal whose cliiefest sting was 
 not his own hardship, but their ill-fortune who, per- 
 chance, had trusted in his name and staked their hope 
 on his sagacity. 
 
 Even for a friend he would not flex the truth of 
 history by a hair's breadth ; nor b}^ his silence do in- 
 justice to an enemy. 
 
 So true himself, that he could not suspect another 
 of insincerity. 
 
 So simple-minded that the w^orld knew not his 
 greatness, least of all the land he loved. 
 
 Ah, Blower, how pathetic — how woeful beyond 
 all parallel — is tha't sole sentence of excuse that ever 
 fell from his lips in those last sad days, not willingly 
 spoken even then, but wrung from his agony by the 
 stern mandate of the law : 
 
 " I did not examine the record of what was done, 
 and if I had I might not have known the facts. I 
 trusted — " 
 
 IN^oblest of leaders ! Manliest of men ! God grant 
 his trustfulness hath met reward ! 
 
 So loyal to his country, that he took not to himself 
 one sentence of the world's unmeasured adulation. 
 
 '' This is not for me," he ever declared, while the 
 world's acclaim echoed in his ears, ''but for the land I 
 love, the reflection of whose glory shines upon my 
 hfe." 
 
 ^ There were two themes that broke the silence which 
 modesty pressed upon his lips, made his eye flash, his 
 cheek flush, and his voice grow eloquent — the reverence 
 which the world has for the great Eepublic, how it 
 
180 THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 
 
 stands for the hope and aspiration of the poor and weak 
 of all the earth, and the patriotism, fortitude, and de- 
 votion of those improvised armies, whose units leaped 
 with joyful readiness from the quiet of peaceful homes 
 to the forefront of relentless war. To them he was 
 w^ont to ascribe all his fame and all the happiness that 
 had fallen to his lot. 
 
 He loved the land he served, so well that devotion 
 to her welfare was a sure passport to his approval — to 
 have suffered for her, an all-sufficient claim, not merely 
 to his pity, but to his reverent regard. 
 
 Never vaunting liis o^Yn patriotism or self-sacrifice, 
 he A^alued W'hat he had done simply for the good 
 which his country and humanity might derive there- 
 from. He accounted his achievements worthy of recog- 
 nition and remembrance, not because of their great- 
 ness or brilliancy, but because of hoped-for beneficent 
 results. 
 
 The agony that ended on Mount McGregor was not 
 endured in vain. Even the last sad days yielded worthy 
 fruits. Glorious as is the record of his prime, the story of 
 these closing days outshines it all ! The valor w^hich he 
 displayed upon the field of battle shows dim beside the 
 heroic fortitude with which he held the grisly shade 
 at bay, w^iile with trembling hand he w^rought upon 
 his self-appointed task! There is no grander figure in 
 history than this decrepid hero, working day by day at 
 a self -delineation as unassuming as the life it portrayed, 
 that he might vindicate his fame and leave a comfort- 
 able inheritance to his loved ones. While we mourn his 
 loss let us rejoice in this fitting climax of a career w^hich 
 
THE VETEKAN AND HIS PIPE. 181 
 
 has enriched the ages with a bright example that will 
 be all the more potent because of this simple soldier's 
 story of a simple soldier's life ! 
 
 He was of the past which the ]N'ation is striving so 
 earnestly to forget — a past which he had already 
 outlived. The thought that inspired the armies he 
 led to victor}^, no longer swaj^s the hearts of our people. 
 The IN'ation exults in forgetfulness, as if yictoYj had 
 been the badge of shame, and triumph a confession of 
 wrong. He was proud of his leadership in war, not 
 because he had slain or conquered, but because through 
 him the right had triumphed and ultimate good 
 been attained. He exulted in the E'ation's glory, not 
 merely because its light fell on his face, but because he 
 beUeved it a beacon whose rays invited the world on- 
 ward and upward. 
 
 The study of the epoch of his fame has been so 
 persistently deprecated by his countrj^men that the 
 memory of his great deeds has sunk into oblivion 
 almost as dense as if ages rolled between us and 
 them. The school-boy of to-day knows all about 
 the heroes of antiquity, but of Grant he has learned 
 little more than the story of his heroic fight with 
 death. The victories he won are less familiar to his 
 young countrymen than those of a hundred years 
 ago. The struggle which he brought to a glori- 
 ous end is remembered onh^ as a great misfortune. 
 A reunited country makes haste to forget the means of 
 its salvation. They who sought to overthrow are 
 honored above those who fought to save. The JN'ation's 
 flag that floated brightly over Appomattox, droops as 
 
182 THE VETEEAN AND HIS PIPE. 
 
 low in honor of one who sought to destroy as in mem- 
 ory of him who fought to preserve. 
 
 Whether Grant was right or Lee was wrong is 
 accounted not merely an irrelevant, but an imperti- 
 nent incpiiry. It matters not, we are taught to-day, on 
 which side lay the right of yesterday. Indeed, it is 
 deemed by far the better form to believe that the right 
 was not upon either side, but somewhere between, or 
 else, perchance, hi nuljibiis. We are taught that charity 
 demands forgetfulness, and that wisdom counsels, not 
 forgetfulness merely, but even justification of the Na- 
 tion's foes. To-day, the accepted theory of the great 
 convulsion from the throes of which the hero sprung 
 whose death we mourn, is that the Nation was but half 
 right at the best, and revolution but half wrong at the 
 worst. Slavery we are told, Avas indeed an evil ; but 
 the negro was only half entitled to be free. The rights 
 of men, they would have us believe, are only myths 
 and "the rights of things" alone are real. It was, 
 perhaps, well enough to take off the shackles, but 
 radically wrong — so the wisdom of to-day declares 
 — to confer the rights of citizenship. So the balance 
 is struck. Treason stands uncondemned, while its 
 overthrow is scarce half-justified. The hero sinks 
 to rest, his laurels already half -withered by the frosts of 
 forgetfulness while the traitor from his dying bed "^ be- 
 
 *A few weeks before the death of Gen. Grant, the flag was placed at 
 half-mast on the buildings of the Department of the Interior at Washington 
 as a tribute of national regard for Jacob H . Thompson, who was the secre- 
 tary of that department under Mr. Buchanan, and was afterwards the Con- 
 federate agent sent to Canada for the express purpose of promoting riot, 
 arson and seci-et treasonable oi-ganization throughout the North. He was 
 not a leader in honorable warfare, but the instrument \>j which thieves and 
 
THE VETERAN AND flIS PIPE. 183 
 
 holds the I*^ation's flag lowered in honor of his treason ! 
 In a little while, no doubt, the line will be obliterated ; 
 and those who wore " the blue " and those that donned 
 " the gray," will be thought to have been equal trans- 
 gressors, or perhaps with loving flattery they will greet 
 each other as equally deserving patriots! It is well 
 that he who died did not tarry with us until that day 
 had fully come ! 
 
 Now the old battle-flags will be brought forth and 
 the bowed and the sorrowing veterans will march in 
 sad procession to the tomb. The very cannon which 
 he captured will from their smoking throats proclaim 
 his apotheosis. Had he lived a little longer it might 
 even have happened that the tattered fragments of 
 the standards which he had watched tossing above 
 the wave of battle — telling how the conflict ebbed 
 and flowed — had been thought to smack too strongly 
 of unpleasant memories to be displayed in honor of 
 their captor ! 
 
 The I^ation will do honor to the illustrious dead, 
 because his renown has added to its glory ; yet under- 
 neath the show of sorrow there will be a sentiment very 
 close akin to relief. The new life buries in his grave a 
 potent reminder of the old. Other nations saw him 
 from afar and offered tribute to his grand simplicity. 
 Only we, who claimed him for our own, mocked his 
 rare modesty and rewarded his devotion with disparage- 
 ment and contumely. 
 
 murderers were employed in the service of treason ! He was one who con- 
 spired with criminals, inciting- them with the lust of plunder to the commis- 
 sion of private crime in order that the Nation might be weakened and the 
 hopes of the Confederacy strengthened. 
 
184 THE VETEKAN AND HIS PIPE. 
 
 Thank God, Blower, the swift approach of death 
 stirred the Nation to a tardy justice ; and, in name at 
 least, saved us from the shame that seemed impending. 
 To-day gives not the meed of fullest approval to the 
 man of yesterday. The rugged steel of heroic achieve- 
 ment attracts its fancy not so much as the gilded glitter 
 of pretense. Gold is its sole standard of value. The 
 Nation's heart is kept under seal in the time-lock 
 vaults of the Treasury. Polish rather than strength, 
 is the gauge of excellence. The power to forget is 
 deemed the highest test of patriotism. 
 
 Let us not murmur. Blower, the blame is not alto- 
 gether with to-day. The faults of the tree are found 
 first in the kernel. If questions of right and wrong 
 have little place in the ])olitical ethics of the present, it 
 must be because yesterda}^, with all its glory and all 
 its heroism, was somehow unfaithful to its trust. The 
 seeds of evil lie a long while dormant, but " in fullness 
 of time their ripe fruits must abound." The hero who 
 journeys to his tomb to-day will only receive his full 
 meed of honor in some far future, when the American 
 people shall have more fully learned the lesson of the 
 struggle in which he led them on to victory. They will 
 only realize the debt they owe to his genius, manhood, 
 and determined purpose, when they comprehend the 
 fact that truth is not the question of an hour or right- 
 eousness a matter of a day. He was a hero, not because 
 he fought well, but because he led to victory the hosts 
 marshaled in support of right. We may pity arxd for- 
 give the foe. We may regret that brave men should 
 have erred. We may restore to every privilege those 
 
THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 185 
 
 who have transgressed. But we can not blot out the 
 fact — the one great, overwhehnifig fact — that their 
 acts were evil ; that the cause for which they fought 
 was the degradation of humanity, and that which he 
 maintained, its great uplifting ! 
 
 To-day we are in the trough of that great wave of 
 conscience that yesterday swept over the land. 
 
 Men say it was a stolen tide ; 
 The Lord, who sent it, He knows all. 
 
 We have accounted it an accident. It was in truth 
 a moral consequence. We have declared the great 
 questions of yesterday and their logical resultant to be 
 outside of the domain of politics. We have insisted upon 
 making that an exception which ought ever to be the 
 rule. We have sought to limit political issues in the 
 Republic to questions of finance and administration. 
 We have thrust human right from off the pedestal of 
 aspiration and lifted up instead a golden image. We 
 have bidden our children worship peace, rather than 
 righteousness ; cunning rather than courage ; gain 
 rather than greatness ! 
 
 It was a grievous fault, 
 And grievously hath Caesar answered it. 
 
 Our hero goeth to his grave, his fame clouded only 
 by its malignant shadow. 
 
 A nation mourns sincerely enough, but still wonder- 
 ingly. Our comrades, Blower, grown old and gray, 
 speak of him in choking tones, with tearful eyes. They 
 mourn not the man only — not merely the hero-leader 
 — but the life, the inspiration which he represented. 
 They feel that we cast with him into the grave 
 
186 THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 
 
 tliat thought which made the epoch by which his active 
 Hfe was bounded, the most notable in the world's 
 history. They have lost something more than a com- 
 rade. To their stricken hearts it seems that the most 
 noted land-mark of a mighty epoch has disappeared. 
 To them, the rebellion (if the word is not taboo) was 
 even more striking in its moral and intellectual aspects 
 than in its physical manifestations. To those who 
 stand beside them, the young whose memories barely 
 overlap his glory's brightest zone, the conflict in which 
 his laurels were won is only a struggle of man with 
 man for power — of beast with beast for mastery. They 
 rejoice in his fame as in the memory of a soldier who 
 won victories which have reflected credit on our nation- 
 al prowess. What those victories mean, why those 
 battles were fought, they only vaguely guess and dimly 
 care. Their fathers in their zeal to guard against 
 hatred and malice enjoined the duty of forgetfulness 
 so effectively, that the hero's deeds are half forgotten, 
 and the hero's cause so lost in oblivion, that his funeral 
 eulogium falls upon wondering ears like the story of 
 some long dead and unrelated past. 
 
 To those who clamber about our knees, Blower, the 
 little ones whose wondering eyes will fall upon the 
 pageant of to-day, in whose ears the booming of the 
 funeral guns will live as sad sweet memories when age 
 shall have touched their locks with gray and time 
 shall have taught them by harsh tutelage who 
 and what he really was whose earthly form we now 
 consign to dust — to them it will be given to measure 
 arig-ht his greatness and to ascribe to him his true place 
 
THE VETEKAN AND HIS PIPE. 187 
 
 in the temple of fame. To them, the fact that he 
 saved the nation from dismemberment will mean more 
 than to us, for they will have learned from what fate, 
 and for what glorious destiny, it was preserved. 
 
 So long as men shall love liberty and hate oppres- 
 sion ; so long as there shall be on earth one man to 
 whom memory or tradition brings the story of the 
 slave's sad fate ; so long as there shall be one earnest 
 lover of his fellow's right whose cheek flushes with 
 shame and anger at the story of unrighted wrong ; so 
 long as any human soul looks up to God out of the 
 sanctuary of an ebon form ; so long as the boundary of 
 equal right and privilege is marked and determined in 
 the least degree by the color of the freeman's skin ; so 
 long as earthly pen shall write or human eye shall read 
 the story of our yesterday^ — so long the name of Ulys- 
 ses S. Grant v,all be held in loving and grateful remem- 
 brance by those to whom it is given by divine ordain- 
 ment to confer the highest fame — the weak and poor 
 of earth, to whom liberty is not an empty form of 
 words, but the golden gate of opportunity — the very 
 open door of heaven! 
 
 We Avill wear the badge of mourning, Blower. The 
 empty sleeve shall bear for many a day the emblem of 
 bereavement. But we will not count him dead. Our 
 Grant, the patient, modest, brave — the type and pro- 
 duct of our new-world life — can never die ! 
 
 The stars on our banner grow suddenly dim, 
 Let us weep in our darkness, but weep not for liim ; 
 Not for him, who departing left millions in tears ; 
 Not for him, who has died full of honors and years ; 
 Not for him, who ascended Fame's ladder so high — 
 
 From the round at the top he has stepped to the sk^^ ! 
 July 31, 1885, 
 
THE EEFLECTED LIGHT OF FAME. 
 
 SLOWLY the pageantry of death proceeds on Mount 
 McGregor. The great leader is borne to his last 
 resting-place. Flags droop above his bier. Mourning 
 emblems line his last triumphal course. Cities and 
 states contend for the honor of sheltering his remains. 
 They who spurned him living, covet the privilege of 
 shining in the reflected light of his renown. The 
 Illation's capital city — a capital only in name, where 
 but the shreds and fragments of national life are to be 
 found — clamors angrily because the hero's tomb is not 
 to be added to that national museum, by the exhibition 
 of which those multitudes of strangers are lured within 
 its limits, to become the lawful prey of its inhabitants. 
 Day by day we have watched the course of prepara- 
 tion, and day by day we have talked of the dead hero 
 and of the time when his fame was won, with that 
 friend who stood then upon the other side. The 
 sword we wore at Shiloh and at Yicksburg hangs 
 draped upon the silent wall at home, where one whose 
 shackles the great hero did so much to unloose forgets 
 not to do tender homage to his memory. 
 
 For us old soldiers even the pleasant summer sports 
 have lost their charm. Rod and line have been idle 
 since the day the hero died. Our old fisherman com- 
 rade has no heart for the oar, and the rippling waters 
 
 188 
 
THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. • 189 
 
 of the fair lake have wooed us hourly, but in vain. 
 It is amazing, Blower, how universal is the feeling, 
 that with him we bury the spirit and aspiration of 
 that wondrous day when he sprang from obscurity to 
 fame. Even Pascal Eaines, despite his cynicism and 
 the fact which he cannot ignore and will not deny, 
 that to applaud the patriotism and devotion of Grant, 
 is to admit his own error and certify his own shame, 
 even he has been depressed and restless during the 
 whole week, while the dead has waited for the country 
 to prepare the elegiac pomp, which will attend its 
 greatest soldier's obsequies. We have smoked our 
 pipes together, half -unconscious of the solace Ave de- 
 rived therefrom; scanned the maps of old familiar 
 fields ; followed the routes of advancing and retreating 
 armies ; and by the aid of many a printed page, have 
 tried to revivify the past and reawaken in our hearts 
 the thrill of its great impulses. 
 
 '' Do you know, Ben IN'athan," said our friend, as 
 we sat -together looking out upon the flashing waters 
 of the noble bay, after we had read the daily record of 
 the world's adulation for the dead, "that I feel as if 
 our day was to be buried in his tomb ? The pomp and 
 pageantry that will attend his interment seem to me 
 almost a mockery of his devotion. I never saw him 
 but once in that climateric era of his renown. It was 
 just after he had received the surrender of Lee, when, 
 still splashed and grimed with the stains of that furious 
 campaign, clad still in the simple dress hardly distin- 
 guishable from a private's uniform, he had started 
 back from the scene of his greatest triumph, not wait- 
 
190 THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 
 
 ing to view the smoking ruins of the fallen capital, nor 
 enjoy the plaudits of his fellow-citizens, but desirous 
 only of completing the mighty task intrusted to his 
 hands, and seeking again the bosom of the family he 
 loved. As the little cavalcade passed by us, I scanned 
 curiously the firm placid countenance of the chief. 
 There was not a trace of exultation in it — only com- 
 plete absorption in the new duties that confronted him. 
 They drew rein at a roadside spring to rest the horses, 
 which were being pressed as if the exigencies of a new 
 campaign were already spurring him to renewed 
 activity. There were some officers of rank accom- 
 panying him — one a General who was among the 
 most trusted of his subordinates. These with a few 
 orderlies and the members of his staff constituted his 
 sole escort. Quite a little company of loiterers had 
 gathered at the old country tavern — soldiers in blue 
 from a camp near by and footsore Confederates on 
 their w^ay home, if happily war had left them any 
 homes. A train of ambulances under the charge of an 
 assistant surgeon had halted there the night before, 
 and were still waiting for the roads to be cleared 
 before them. Trains were passing constantly carry- 
 ing rations to the victorious army and the prison- 
 ers they had taken. I was in one of the ambulances, 
 not very badly wounded, though one of your shells had 
 taken away at once both the artificial limb on which 
 I had served for more than a year and the horse I rode, 
 leaving me, as the Yankee surgeon jocosely said, one 
 of the "worst disabled" men in his care. I think his 
 jest secured me a place in that ambulance and a free 
 
THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 191 
 
 ricle back to the verge of the world's life on the James. 
 I have always missed that leg. It was of French 
 make, and when I first reported for duty on it my 
 commanding officer regarded me very dubiously for 
 a moment, and said : 
 
 " ' Do you think it will stand the wear and tear of a 
 long march ? ' 
 
 '''Oh, I reckon so,' I replied; 'it has already run 
 the blockade.' 
 
 " He laughed, and let me have my old place, and 
 the wooden limb was no very serious inconvenience 
 until Sheridan's artillery took it off rather uncere- 
 moniously. The stump has never been in good con- 
 dition since. I understand now something of a sailor's 
 dread of splinters in time of battle. 
 
 '' A group of children were playing in a wrecked 
 army-wagon by the roadside. Among them a fair-haired 
 little girl. Alighting from his horse, the great captain 
 surveyed the surroundings with a look which one felt 
 included everything. Then lighting a fresh cigar, he 
 strolled over to a house across the way, addressed a few 
 words to the wife of the owner, who sat upon the porch 
 bewailing the losses she had suffered at the hands of 
 both armies, and inquiring anxiously as to her hus- 
 band's fate, who, she had learned was still with his 
 command in Lee's army only a few days before the 
 surrender. Of course, his non-appearance filled her 
 with alarm. The General spoke a few words of conso- 
 lation and then strolled over to the old wagon, which 
 the children had converted into a play-house. When 
 called to partake of the simple repast which had 
 
192 THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 
 
 been hastil}^ spread for him, the great Captain led 
 the httle girl over to the grove, listening gravely 
 to her prattle about the scenes which had recently 
 been enacted before her wondering eyes. There was 
 some laughter when he and his queer companion 
 reached the group around the spring, but he only 
 patted the child's head and said something I could 
 not hear which hushed the levity of his companions. 
 A servant had placed a red blanket at the foot of 
 an oak tree for the General's accommodation. This 
 he half unfolded and gravely seated the child beside 
 him. I left them sitting there, the child partaking 
 of the conqueror's modest repast. 
 
 " I was in a state of chronic hunger then, Ben 
 J^athan. The two days' rations we had received from 
 your commissary the day before had lasted me about 
 half as long as they would a raw recruit on a hard 
 march. I had hardly eaten before for a week, and 
 such a thing as a full meal was almost beyond the 
 verge of my recollection. I did not know where the 
 next meal would come from nor when it would arrive. 
 I was still a prisoner. Having been captured before 
 the final surrender, it was yet doubtful whether its 
 terms would be extended to those in my condition. 1 
 think, however, that sight did me more good then 
 the richest repast that even the lavish abundance 
 of Yankeeland could have afforded. I never saw your 
 dead commander again ; but I heard afterward that his 
 kindness to the little girl did not end with sharing his 
 luncheon with her. 
 
 " Of course I can not share vour sorrow in his 
 
THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 193 
 
 death. I admire his strength, courage, and devotion 
 to the principles fpr which he fought. The world 
 must always do reverence to his modesty, simplicity, 
 and purity of character. He no doubt saved his coun- 
 try as surely in the Presidential chair as on the battle- 
 field. If any weaker man — any one whose relentless 
 resolution we of the south had not learned so thor- 
 oughly — had been at the head of your National affairs 
 during the troubled years of reconstruction the horrors 
 of the strife which culminated at Appomattox would 
 have been multiplied a thousand fold. Even as it is, 
 you are appalled by the bare recital of the terrible 
 facts of that era. The'tliirteen thick volumes crowded 
 with the testimony of murder, mutilation, and univer- 
 sal terror are a terrible arraignment of our civilization, 
 and yet they tell but a tithe of the horrors of that in- 
 scrutable day ! Thank heaven ! they are now ex- 
 ceedingly rare. It is charged that our Democratic 
 Congressmen swapped and bartered with their thrifty 
 Eepublican associates until they obtained nearly all 
 the volumes that were printed and condemned them to 
 destruction. I do not know how that may be, but I 
 wish they had secured the ver}^ last one, so as to have 
 obliterated from the record all memory of that shame- 
 ful time. But that is neither here nor there. What I 
 wish to call your attention to, is the simple inquiry : 
 If, despite the prestige of Grant's name, that terrible 
 epidemic of crime and violence which is called Kuklux- 
 ism left its fearful scar upon our civilization, what 
 might not have happened had a weaker hand held Ihe 
 reins of power ? 
 13 
 
194 THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 
 
 " The south will mourn in him a brave soldier and 
 a generous foe — one to whose masterly genius and un- 
 flinching persistency it was no discredit to yield, and 
 whose modesty and thoughtful consideration did all 
 that lay in his power to sweeten the bitter draught, a 
 soldier's duty compelled him to press to our lips. It 
 is the man, however, and not the representative of a 
 cause or the exponent of a principle that we mourn. 
 The death of Grant does not in any degree change or 
 modify our views of the past, the present or the future. 
 We are simply paying in kind a debt we owe to him, 
 individually, as ex-Confederates. He was magnani- 
 mous to us in the last hours of that fond dream which 
 had so sad an ending. We would be cravens indeed 
 if we did not remember this, and weave a chaplet for 
 his bier. His fame brings up the memory of our 
 humiliation, but in the presence of death we can 
 afford to be magnanimous. For myself, individually, 
 I can honestly say that I mourn him as an upholder of 
 a righteous cause, a true principle, Avho has suffered 
 cruel wrong at the hands of those who owed to him so 
 much. I believe that time will bring his justification 
 as a statesman, as well as continue to increase his fame 
 as a soldier. 
 
 " It is strange to remember how bitterly he was 
 attacked for merely proposing as a measure of national 
 defense the acquisition of San Domingo. Already the 
 necessity of interfering in the affairs of Central 
 America has verified the wisdom of his forecast ; and 
 we are beginning to look forward with complacency 
 to the prospect of relations affecting isthmian transit 
 
THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 195 
 
 which may at any time involve us in foreign war and 
 render such an outwork as he sought thus to obtain, 
 of incalculable value. 
 
 " So, too, with regard to his recommendation for a 
 limitation of the elective franchise in the choice of 
 Federal officers. Then, it seemed little less than 
 treason to the principles the IS'orth had fought to 
 maintain. T^ow, the chief opposition to an educational 
 qualification would come from the South. We have 
 changed places wonderfully in the whirligig of time, 
 Ben IN'athan, and I sometimes wonder if the future 
 does not hold for us as many surprises of this sort as 
 the past. 
 
 " I have told you often that he reminded me very 
 much of that dead hero whom the South has shrined 
 above all other sainted memories in its heart of hearts 
 — ' Stonewall ' Jackson. In modesty, determination, 
 and unwavering confidence in the result of the con- 
 flict, they were alike. Jackson never doubted the suc- 
 cess of the Confederacy ; Grant never questioned its 
 ultimate collapse. Both were at the same time singu- 
 larly reticent and 3^et singularly outspoken. Both had 
 the instinct of the great commander, which sees only 
 the beginning and the end — the great objective and 
 the first step toward its attainment — leaving all the 
 intermediate moveanents to be determined by the 
 events of the conflict. Neither excelled as a subordi- 
 nate, though one was a martinet and the other negli- 
 gent of everything but the essentials of soldierly con- 
 duct. E'either had any genius for defensive strategy, 
 nor any hesitation about assuming the offensive. The 
 
196 THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 
 
 campaign of the one in the valley of the Shenandoah 
 is equaled only in our history by that marvelous suc- 
 cession of victories by which the other compelled the 
 surrender of Yicksburg. They were alike, too, in their 
 restless activity — the success of one blow only revealed 
 to them a way to more successfully deliver the next. 
 
 " More and more I have come of late to regard them 
 as types of their respective sections rather than others 
 more generally regarded as true exemplars of the 
 respective peoples. In one respect each differed very 
 greatly from the majority of their compeers. Grant 
 did not believe that the overthrow of the Confederacy 
 removed forever all national peril, or even the 
 possibility of civil convulsion. I have reason to 
 believe, Ben ^Rathan, that his a23prehension of future 
 conflict between different elements of our population, 
 grew more intense and positive during his later years, 
 and was only dispelled in his last days by those mes- 
 sages of condolence and sympathy from the South 
 which he accepted, as he did the honors showered upon 
 him by other nations, in a representative capacity, and 
 counted as indications of concurrence on the part of 
 the South in the principles for which he had fought 
 and the social and political order which his sword had 
 established. He had an unwavering confidence in the 
 destiny of the great Republic. He looked forward to 
 a homogeneous people, among whom there should be 
 no difference of interest — no ^orth no South, no East, 
 no West, save in geographical relation. Of this he found 
 little evidence until a divine pity for his sufferings im- 
 pelled so many of our people to express a sympathy, 
 
THE VETEKAN AND HIS PIPE. 197 
 
 which his self -forgetful modesty impelled him to con- 
 strue into a declaration of allegiance to the principles 
 and ideas of which he counted himself only the insig- 
 nificant agent and representative. 
 
 " Singularly enough, ' Stonewall' Jackson had a like 
 confidence in the converse of this idea — the destiny of 
 ultimate separation. 
 
 " ■ This is our country/ he said to me one evening as 
 we lay upon the banks of the Potomac, waiting to cross 
 over into Maryland in the morning. I had visited his 
 quarters in my capacity as a staff officer to convey to 
 him the last orders of his superior before the move- 
 ment began. I found him poring over a map of the 
 region we were about to enter, and the nature of the 
 communication I brought made it necessary to continue 
 its inspection. It was a hot day in the early autumn, 
 but his military coat was buttoned closely about his 
 curiously angular form. His sword was on the table, 
 and during our whole conversation he never once re- 
 laxed that peculiar rigidity of figure which he seemed 
 to consider inseparable from the military profession. 
 ^TMs is our country^ he repeated more slowly and em- 
 phatically as he swept his finger along the crest of the 
 Alleghanies, in such a manner as to include Baltimore, 
 and then carried it westward along the Ohio. ' This is 
 our country. We are not invading an enemy's terri- 
 tory for the sake of conquest, or to keep him from 
 overrunning ours. We are simply taking our own.' 
 
 " ' The man in Washington,' he continued, for it was 
 by this circumlocution that he always referred to Mr. 
 Lincclxi, 'asserts that the territory claimed by the 
 
198 THE YETEEAN AND HIS PIPE. 
 
 United States is destined to be one country, because 
 there are no natural geographical boundaries separating 
 its component parts. Does he count this line of moun- 
 tain and river, stretching from the sea to the Mississippi, 
 no natural boundary ? But even if he does not, there 
 is a boundary, Captain, a thousand times more insup- 
 arable than this. JS'ations are not really separated by 
 mountains and rivers. These, in fact, serve to mark 
 the line of agreement rather than demarkation. They 
 are only the convenient evidence of convention. They 
 are lines that may be so easily traced as to make mis- 
 take on the part of adjacent governments inex- 
 cusable. Natural obstacles are simply strategic lines 
 between hostile forces. They may preserve nations 
 from attack, or give them specific advantages for de- 
 fense, but they never differentiate peoples. Peoples 
 are separated not by boundaries, but by attributes and 
 characteristics. We are two peoples, as distinct and 
 irreconcilable in character as if an ocean rolled be- 
 tween. The mistake of the North consists in not rec- 
 ognizing this fact and letting us go in peace. Neither 
 force nor time can make us one. Habits of thought, 
 social customs, even the very constitution of our lives, 
 mark us as distinct and separate. The results of this 
 conflict can not change these facts. There must be 
 two peoples and one republic or two peoples and two 
 republics. I hold that in the interests of peace, hu- 
 manit}^, and the future progress of mankind, it is better 
 that there should be two harmonious nationalities 
 rather than one weak and discordant one — subject at 
 any time to the terrors of threatened dismemberment. 
 
THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 199 
 
 " ' That is why I am here, young man,' he continued. 
 ^ I do not know much about the formal right or wrong 
 of the matter according to the convention by which we 
 were bound together — the Constitution. But I tliink 
 God has written his decree in the natures of tiie two 
 peoples and we are now working it out. We may not 
 succeed. I sometimes think we shall not. Those who 
 control our armies do not seem to realize these things 
 very clearly. They seem afraid to declare the 
 truth. They cling to slavery. It is at best only an 
 accident, but they dare not even make it serviceable to 
 our cause. I do not see how it can long outlast this 
 war, whatever the result — and I would give every one 
 his freedom who would bear arms against the enemy. 
 They would not make such soldiers as we have, but 
 they are good enough to face the mercenaries who 
 swarm like locusts in our front. Of course they have 
 got to be free some time, but that fact will not change 
 our identity as a people, nor assimilate us in any great 
 degree with the l^orth. 
 
 " ^ Ko Captain,' he repeated again impressively, 
 'this is oior country. All this,' sweeping his hand 
 southward from the southern edge of Pennsylvania, 
 'must sometime be a great Southern republic. It 
 will include these islands too,' pointing to the West In- 
 dies, ' and these jarring nationalities down to where the 
 Isthmus merely parts the eastern and western strands 
 all will some time be one nationality, homogene- 
 ous in its interests, and the underlying character- 
 istics of its people, at peace with its sister republic of 
 the North, its flag on every sea, and its ambassador in 
 
200 THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 
 
 every court. We may not live to see it, Captain, but 
 it will come, because it is written by God's hand in the 
 hearts of two great peoples. We may not live to 
 see it,' he repeated, looking up at me with that 
 peculiar earnestness of gaze which characterized him, 
 ' but when it comes, whether it be during the next yeai 
 or the next century, the world will do justice to our 
 memory. The Deo vindice upon our flag is not a vain 
 appeal. God will vindicate the truth he has revealed. 
 It may not be in our way and time, but His truth can 
 not fail.' 
 
 " He bowed his head in reverence as he spoke, then 
 walked abstractedly across the room once or twice. I 
 waited for my dismissal, but seeing he had forgotten 
 my presence, at length accosted him. He became at 
 once the alert and impatient soldier, repeating again 
 the message I was to carry back to headquarters. As I 
 took my leave he said, '- You must pardon me, Captain, 
 I rarely speak of these things, but the shadow of these 
 Maryland Heights always ' puts toys of desperation ' in 
 my mind. Good night.' 
 
 '' I shook hands and rode away dazed and astounded 
 with what I had heard from the lips of our ' silent 
 man.' 
 
 " I wonder, Ben Nathan, which will prove the truer 
 — the hope of the hero who made his apotheosis on 
 Mount McGregor, or the forecast of that lion-hearted 
 saint who went up to that God whose lightest word he 
 sought to obey with unquestioning fealty, from the 
 field of Chancellorsville. 
 
 ''I am glad, Ben Kathan, that the messages of 
 
THE VETERAX AND HIS PIPE. 201 
 
 sympathy that came up from the South were miscon- 
 strued by the suffering soldier. It no doubt added 
 greatly to the placidity of his last days to have his 
 hopes confirmed and feel that the turmoil of war which 
 he directed was but the precursor of a peace and pros- 
 perity more lasting and complete than even his patri- 
 otic aspiration could have believed possible to result 
 therefrom. We can not mourn in him a hero, standing 
 forth as the incarnation of cherished ideas, as the 
 people of the North should, and, to a certain extent no 
 doubt do ; but as a soldier I think we appreciate him 
 better and mourn him even more sincerely than those 
 who reaped advantage from his victory. We are a 
 military people, Ben Xathan, both by instinct and 
 training, and know how to appreciate a soldier. Grant 
 was a soldier of the noblest type. We mourn his death 
 and exult in his fame." 
 August 7th, 1885. 
 
THE MOUE'T OF TEAJSTSFIGUEA- 
 TIOK 
 
 IT is over, Blower. We have bidden adieu to our old 
 commander — the last grand memento of a marvel- 
 ous epoch. We were with those who assembled on 
 Mount McGregor, but we did not look upon the face of 
 the dead. We remember it as it appeared when the 
 light of battle and the glow of victory shone upon it, 
 and we would not have the picture dimmed by the 
 shadow of death or the trace of suffering. As he was, 
 so shall he always be in our memory. We only went 
 to salute his ashes and to look in the faces of those who 
 crowded about his bier. It was a marvelous spectacle 
 — the beginning of a mighty pageant. We hope to be 
 forgiven, Blower, if with our desire to show respect for 
 the greatest of the grand army which freedom mus- 
 tered in for the defense of right, was mingled a strange 
 anxiety to note the behavior of the multitude — to 
 compare this pageant with others of similar character, 
 and institute some comparison between Yesterday and 
 Today. Perhaps I was the more inclined to do this 
 because our friend, Pascal Kaines, has so persistently 
 declared that an apparent and notable change is taking 
 place in the character of our Northern people. I asked 
 him to go with us, Blower, but he declined, for reasons 
 that seemed to me both creditable to him and honor^ 
 able to the dead, 
 
 303 
 
THE VETEKAN AND HIS PIPE. 203 
 
 " No, no, Ben Kathan," he said, '' go you and bury 
 your dead, and note with your own eyes whether they 
 who commemorate his death are the same people that 
 mourned at the grave of Lincoln. If your eyes and 
 he^rt find no difference, then it may be that my reason 
 and observation are at fault. I will not go, because if 
 I stood as a representative of my own feeling, I must 
 stand almost alone. The occasion is one that belong-s 
 to you. At the best, we of the South could be only 
 strangers in your lodge of sorrow. We honor the dead 
 as a brave foeman and a generous conqueror. We do 
 not mourn for him. In his death we have lost nothing, 
 as by his life we gained nothing but the bitterness of 
 defeat. He represented no principle or idea which the 
 South can honor or adopt, consistently with self-respect 
 and due regard for the memory of her own heroes, 
 save devotion to what he conceived to be his duty. I 
 am glad that our people recognize this fact, and that 
 their declarations, properly construed, cannot be taken 
 as indices of an}^ other spirit. They will stand 
 in line and paj^ honor to his remains, distinct- 
 ively and properly, as Confederates acknowledging 
 and in part requiting, the debt of honor contracted at 
 Appomattox. This is as it should be. 
 
 " JN^o doubt their action will be misconstrued. The 
 sentimental Is"orth will be sure to consider it an indi- 
 cation of much more than it professes to be. There 
 will be a deluge of gush which will seem to me all the 
 more whimsical because I recognize the sincerity of 
 your countrymen from whom it will mostly come. If 
 they would but pause to think they would see how ab- 
 
2()'i: THE VETEKAN AND HIS PIPE. 
 
 surd is the deduction they would draw from this action. 
 Suppose ex-President Davis were to die to-morrow. 
 Would the people of the ]S"orth — would the government 
 of the United States and the states of the North — join 
 with us in mourning for ou7' dead ? You would not ; 
 you could not. Jefferson Davis represents to you, to 
 the people of the North, to every man who was loyal 
 to the IJnion cause, ideas, purposes, results which are 
 abhorrent to every fiber of your nature. He is to you 
 the incarnation of dismemberment and separatism. He 
 represents the idea of human mequality, as opposed to 
 your pet dogma of equality of rights. His very name 
 signifies to you the antipode of your idea of ' Freedom 
 and the Eight.' 
 
 " Not only that, but in your mind the blood of hun- 
 dreds of thousands is upon his hands, and the woes of 
 many millions clinging to his skirts. You winced just 
 now when I referred to him as ' ex-President,' yet such 
 was his title, conferred upon him by the unanimous 
 voice of a people who willingly followed his leadership, 
 approved his acts, and despite his errors still look upon 
 him as an unfortunate victim, who has suffered unjustly 
 because of his devotion to the cause which they com- 
 mitted to his hands. You see, Ben Nathan, there is no 
 reciprocity in the matter, and cannot be. We do not 
 honor Grant for the mctories he achieved, but for the 
 magnanimity he displayed toward the captives of his 
 sword. You owe no such debt of honor. Instead of 
 being an evidence of reconciliation, our participation 
 in the funeral pageantry merely shows our willingness 
 
THE VETEEAN AND HIS PIPE. 205 
 
 to forget obnoxious achievements in order to repay 
 personal favor. 
 
 " The only portion of our people who will mourn 
 the dead leader in any such sense as his death appeals 
 to you who loved and followed him — as the represent- 
 ative of a great principle and a righteous cause — is 
 that unfortunate race whom poverty prevents from 
 giving imposing expression to their sorrow, and the 
 color of whose skin, I fear, would hardly make them 
 welcome participants in the funeral pageantry. Yet 
 they are the true mourners. They have the right to 
 stand even between the living soldiers and their dead 
 commander. If I were a colored man I would walk day 
 and night to be present and claim the honor of march- 
 ing behind his ashes. If I had charge of his obsequies, 
 while I would welcome not less warmly the military 
 and civic organizations of the South, I would put close 
 behind the catafalque, in the place of honored and de- 
 serving mourners, a hundred, aye, a thousand of that 
 race— jean-clad and reverent, types of its best and 
 forerunners of the hope his sword conquered for them. 
 I honor him because he first recognized and honored 
 them as deserving elements of the new Eepublic, which 
 you think is safely. built upon the fragments of the 
 old. Some he may have dinstinguished above their 
 individual desert, but none beyond the right and merit 
 of the race they represented. I will not go myself, Ben 
 E'athan, but I have sent a check to pay the expenses of 
 one who is a teacher, and may some day become a 
 leader of his people, from Buckhead Lodge to Mount 
 McGregor and back. He has never seen the great 
 
206 THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 
 
 soldier and ought to look upon the dead man's face. It 
 may be to him an inspiration that will yield good fruit 
 in the future and he has well deserved this favor at 
 my hands. He is the only son, Ben Nathan, of that 
 faithful servant who song'ht me out between the picket 
 lines that night you wot of, and pressed to your lips as 
 well as mine, that draught of cool water which was of 
 all things most precious next to life itself. His father 
 was a hero. The son is a faithful and worthy teacher. 
 His people need great men, and their necessity must 
 call them forth. That liberty which chose a tanner's 
 son for its great instrument, may yet find a soldier or 
 a statesman in the direct line from my 'boy' John! 
 The slave who risked and lost his life for his master is 
 no unlikely sire for a race of heroes !" 
 
 It is true, Blower, it is not the same. I scanned 
 with care the faces that bent over the dead hero's dust. 
 A score of years ago I looked into the faces of those 
 who crowded solemnly and ceaselessly for a last look at 
 the features of the dead Lincoln. Hour after hour, day 
 after day, the silent stream poured on. A block aw^ay 
 sometimes, the multitude stood in double columns wait- 
 ing for their turn to come. The night brought scarcely 
 any diminution. Crowds waited in the street until 
 after midnight — tender ladies, gray -haired men, and 
 children delicately bred. Thousands begged with tears 
 for one more hour to gaze upon the homely lineaments. 
 Those w^ho had once passed through, went back to the 
 foot of the line and waited again for hours, for another 
 opportunity. It seemed that the land was draped from 
 
THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 20T 
 
 sea to sea. But we hardly noted that, Blower, so im- 
 penetrable was the darkness in our own sore hearts. 
 Great multitudes collected at the crossings and at little 
 stations where the train did not stop, merely to" gaze 
 and weep. Great fires were lighted like beacons along 
 the railway that men might stand and mutely testify 
 their grief. Cities seemed dead to everything but the 
 thought of woe. The streets were crowded but 
 silent. 
 
 In all the millions who walked softly by that bier we 
 did not see one smiling face or careless eye. The wife 
 and family of one who watched at its head had not 
 seen him for a year. They knew he was with the funeral 
 train, yet they passed through and did not note his pres- 
 ence. The dead Lincoln blinded their eyes, even to hus- 
 band and father. A watch was set in one city, and it was 
 found that more than half of those who came were in 
 tears when they approached the coffin, and hardly one 
 passed down upon the other side who was not weeping. 
 [N'ever in history was there such a spectacle of univer- 
 sal sorrow. Friends met and wept as they clasped 
 hands in silence. Enemies who had for years passed 
 each other b}^ in silence shook hands with quivering 
 lips and forgot their enmity in the presence of him who 
 liad Avrought so long and arduously " with charity for 
 all." Even when nature compelled interment a wail of 
 sorrowing disappointment went up from those who had 
 missed, not a great spectacle, but a sight of the dear, 
 loved face. At a country station where the train was 
 switched from one track to another at midnight, an 
 humble woman who sold refreshments to the travelers 
 
208 THE VETEEAN AND HIS PIPE. 
 
 at a little counter in the depot, stood in her place 
 her eyes suffused with tears, refusing compensation for 
 the coffee she furnished the escort, and begging pite- 
 ously to be taken to the next great city for one glimpse 
 of the dead whom all the land so loved ! 
 
 I doubt if one in a hundred noted anything of the 
 decorations. They were something wonderful for that 
 da}^, but eyes that were dim with falling tears took 
 little note of the adornments of the bier. I have often 
 thought, Blower, that sorrow could hardly have been 
 more universal and overwhelming when, on the same 
 night, the death angel touched the first-born in every 
 household in a whole land. Lincoln was mourned so 
 deeply that a failure to manifest a participation in the 
 common grief was even perilous. Mobs gathered and 
 houses were defaced because the owners refused to dis- 
 play the emblems of universal grief. Years afterward 
 when a man who had been very prominent in our na- 
 tional history passed away, he had almost a pauper's 
 funeral in the city which had delighted to honor him, 
 because men still remembered with sore hearts that he 
 refused to exhibit the emblems of mourning when 
 Lincoln died. It was as if all the heart's ties had been 
 sundered at once, so solemn, so tender, and so universal 
 was the reverence the nation paid to its great dead. 
 
 It is gone. Many of those who crowded to the cot- 
 tage on Mount McGregor were the personal friends and 
 associates of the dead liero. Their lives were " in the 
 coffin there with Caesar's." There were quivering lips 
 and dewy eyes and solemn drooping steps as they passed 
 reverently by the leader's corpse. Heaven bless them, 
 
THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 209 
 
 and heaven pity them ! Let us whisper no names ! 
 Their grief is as sacred as the stricken wife's bereave- 
 ment ! 
 
 But, ah me, there were some — also ! too many, who 
 would spare neither — ghouls who came to prey on 
 beating hearts! Vultures who would batten on the 
 dead! Magpies who noted only the externals that 
 they might gossip of them afterward ! 
 
 There is no doubt that the final pageant will be the 
 most wonderful ever seen upon the continent, if not 
 the grandest funeral ovation that the world has ever 
 knovrn. Our comrades that follow the great leader's 
 dust will give to it a touching solemnity. The some- 
 time enemies who follow in his train will give a curious 
 interest. He is perhaps the first of conquerors to be 
 followed to his grave by voluntary associations of the 
 captives of his sword. The constituted authorities of 
 country and its constituent commonwealths will make 
 a most imposing and dignified array. The best, the 
 noblest, and most gifted of the land will be there to 
 testify sincere and earnest homage. The land will offer 
 a wonderful display of reverence and devotion to the 
 memory of the second name of its climacteric era. 
 There will be no show of rancor, no hint of any lack of 
 chie respect and honor. The great Eepublic honors his 
 virtues, exults in his patriotism ; is proud of his genius ; 
 glories in his magnanimity, and challenges the world 
 to match his fortitude. Those who lately contemned, 
 to-day vie with his warmest admirers in adulation. 
 
 All this is as it should be, Blower. My eyes grow 
 dim with tears of joy that in the presence of his ashes 
 14 
 
210 THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 
 
 rancor disappears and discord is silent. But it is not 
 like that wonderful pageant of a score of years ago. 
 The multitude will no doubt be decorous and grave ; 
 the display more notable and the assemblage more 
 brilliant ; but the tears will not flow as then. The 
 bowed heads and heaving breasts will be less numerous. 
 Dry eyes and curious glances will be more often seen 
 and the hush of woe will j^ass more quickly away. It 
 is not because the people would do him less honor or 
 hold his memory in less regard. It is only because the 
 thought that inspired his life had passed out of the life 
 of the people. They are proud to do him honor, but 
 the ideas that were the corner-stones of his greatness 
 are of Yesterday and not of To-day. Had he died 
 when Lincoln died he would have been honored like 
 him with a nation's tears. Now the land does homage 
 to his life with proud acclaim. Then his achievements 
 would have been applauded on account of the cause for 
 which he fought. I^ow they are remembered because 
 of the difliculties he overcame. I do not mean to speak 
 disparagingly. Blower. I only wonder if the life which 
 has overlaid and smothered the thought of Yesterday 
 is really a better, truer, noble aspiration, or is the hero's 
 grave to be but a milestone that will mark the swift 
 recession of patriotic devotion, purity, and virtue, before 
 the corrosion of a lower, meaner, baser ideal ? Yester- 
 day mourns him not merely as a central figure of its 
 life, but as a prime exponent of its thought. To-day 
 — ah, well. To-day crowds curiously to view his funeral 
 pageant, to count the horses on his funeral-car, note 
 the draping of his bier, and fire minute guns about 
 
THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. ^H 
 
 his tomb! When their children ask of Grant, no 
 doubt, they will be told it was a goodly spectacle ! ' To- 
 day knows not its debt to the great dead, for it has 
 forgotten from what it was delivered by his hand. 
 August 14tli, 1885. 
 
HYMNS OF THE AGES. 
 
 OUE pleasant summer plans w^re sadly marred by 
 the visitation of sorrow, Blower ; and nature as if 
 to testify her participation in our woe, let loose the 
 storms which had slumbered since we first came to this 
 quiet nook, and our comrade-guide declared, with the 
 caution peculiar to the waterman when speaking of a 
 new experience, that he did not " exactly remember 
 ever to have seen just such a storm on the lake at just this 
 time of year. If it had came a month earlier or had 
 happened round about a month later, 't wouldn't a 
 been surprisin','' he said " but jest at this time, it sartin 
 was a good deal out o' the common." 
 
 The week of elemental warfare ended with a 
 shower on Sunday night. We sat and watched the 
 tempest as it swept over the bay, until the clouds 
 broke away and the stars shone clear. We concluded 
 that it was the " clearing up " shower, and having 
 noted the quarter in which the wind sat decided that 
 the morrow would be a rare day for sport, and so de- 
 termined upon an early start. 
 
 The forecast of the night was abundently fulfilled 
 by the dawning. The beautiful bay was as waveless 
 as when hostile squadrons lay in sight of each other 
 upon its bright waters, unable to begin the work of 
 slaughter, because of the breathless calm that held 
 
 212 
 
THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 213 
 
 them peacefully apart. But the fish were eager and 
 alert, as Raines had predicted. Hardl}^ had the first 
 glittering lure touched the glassy surface when it 
 caught the eye of a waiting Labrax, and, 
 
 With sweeping tail and quivering fin. 
 He sprung above the waters blue. 
 
 in his eagerness to seize the prey. Then there was the 
 gleam of golden scales and the foam of angry strug- 
 gles. The reel sang merrily. The fine silk line cut 
 through the silvery surface, just tinged with the rosy 
 light of the coming day, with that musical hiss which 
 thrills the nerves and steadies the softly straining hand 
 of the angler worthy of the name. The light rod 
 bends evenly from shaft to tip. The attent eye 
 watches the course of the surprised and angry victim 
 as he sweeps back and forth in vain attempts to release 
 himself from the bond, light as a spider's web, but 
 strong as gleaming steal, that drags him with relent- 
 less grip to the waiting net, wherein his struggles end, 
 and the swift changing scales clothe with a golden 
 nimbus the last moments of the finny brave. With 
 the sunrise comes a gentle western breeze, that covers 
 the water with a light, sparkling ripple, which seems 
 but to inflame theYestless rovers of the deep. Hardly 
 a moment passes that from bow or stern a fight, hot 
 enough to stir the sleepiest skiggard who loiters yawn- 
 ing and listless at his morning meal, is not in progress 
 in our little craft. The wind bears us slowly before it, 
 and the trailing bait seems to grow more enticing to 
 the flashing piscine eyes, to which as well as to human 
 vision, no doubt, '^ blessings brighten as they take their 
 
214 THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 
 
 flight." Our weather-beaten fellow-soldier, who mans 
 the oars and wields the landing-net, is kept busy ren- 
 dering, impartial aid to his old foe and former com- 
 rade ; for the best of artificial limbs offers but insecure 
 support to the angler with but an inch and a half of 
 keel beneath him, and a five-pound bass upon an eight- 
 ounce rod. 
 
 Others may sing the delight of capturing " mot- 
 tled beauties " in still, dark pools, where the for- 
 est shadow hides unnumbered myriads of persistent 
 enemies, whose keen stings are held but to increase the 
 angler's delight. The young man whom fortune has 
 blest with a purse long enough to stand the strain of a 
 regulation " rig," and nerves sufficiently obtuse to en- 
 able him to brave the multitudinous annoyances of the 
 Restigouche, may rave of the rapture of racing with a 
 salmon up and down its icy rapids. These and a 
 dozen other forms of this charming sport may each be 
 pronounced by their especial devotees the very acme of 
 the angler's delight ; but one thing is certain, Blower, 
 that for a half -disabled veteran the rod and line 
 offer no keener enjoyment than a pleasant morning on 
 one of our great northern lakes, with a light breeze off 
 the shore and black and yellow bass in a complacent 
 mood. So at least three old campaigners unanimously 
 decided when, as the sun grew warm, we sought the 
 shore ; and in the shade which lay about a cool spring, 
 bubbling from the slaty cliff and trickling over bright 
 sands on its brief course to meet the waiting waves, par- 
 took of the generous luncheon, which a friendly fore- 
 thought had provided ; counted up our spoils ; smoked 
 
THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 215 
 
 our pipes outstretched upon the fragrant turf, and 
 waited for the evening breeze and homeward row. 
 
 It was then that I roused Pascal Raines from his 
 nicotian dreams, to tell me something more of that 
 patriotic psalmody to which he had once alluded, and 
 which I took cafe to intimate that he had evidently 
 studied with peculiar discrimination. He smiled in 
 pleasant appreciation of my well-intended flattery as 
 he replied : 
 
 " Very well, Ben JN'athan, this is, perhaps, as good 
 a time and place as I shall ever find for the redemp- 
 tion of my promise. Strange enough, it was almost 
 Avithin sight of this very spot that my attention was 
 first directed to this subject, and that, too, under cir- 
 cumstances the reverse of pleasant. 
 
 " You did not know that I had ever been here 
 before ? Oh, yes, the pleasant water we have drifted 
 over this morning was no stranger to my eye some 
 twenty odd years ago, though it was not nearly so 
 pleasant a prospect then. When not imprisoned 
 beneath jagged, broken ice-floes the water was almost 
 always covered with cold, sullen-looking waves whose 
 white crests and steely sides made even more frigid the 
 winds that chilled the marrow in the bones of some 
 thousands of war's unfortunates, who were the unwil- 
 Hng guests of their foes. That low, dark spit of land 
 that cuts the horizon yonder, just hides the outline of 
 the island on which stood a celebrated military prison 
 — a bare bit of wave-washed bleakness, admirably 
 adapted to the use to which it was put, so far as the 
 mere security of the prisoners was concerned. We 
 
216 THE VETEKA.N AND HIS PIPE. 
 
 used to think it pretty hard that men whose homes 
 were in the ' sunny South,' and whose blood was at- 
 tempered to that warmer cUme, should be immured in 
 the midst of a frozen sea upon the verj^ northern verge 
 of the national domain. It looked hke murder. We 
 were not so badly cared for, in other respects, but men 
 did die of cold in those contract-builded, wind-swepi 
 barracks. While others — many others — who did not 
 die then and there, bore away the seeds of disease, 
 which even the genial influences of their native clime 
 could not eradicate. I thought then, that it was pur- 
 posely done, by that iron-hearted man who shaped the 
 nation's policy in matters pertaining to the war. It is 
 hard to get over this belief, too, terrible as it seems. 
 
 " I know you have a similar feeling in regard to 
 some of our southern prisoners, and I cannot deny that 
 the facts are terribly against any other hypothesis. 
 You claim that, your soldiers in our hands might have 
 been given the common blessings of fresh air, pure 
 water, and at least the chance to provide themselves 
 with comfortable shelter in a region abounding in for- 
 ests and streams. You claim that these things were 
 forbidden them ; and that, in addition to insufficient 
 food and scanty raiment, you were compelled to bur- 
 row in the earth for shelter from sun and storm ; that 
 words cannot picture the contamination of the pools 
 from which you were compelled to slake your thirst. 
 You believe that the fierce passions which war had in- 
 flamed transformed our leaders into brutish beasts 
 whose lust for vengeance made them murderers of the 
 vilest type. 
 
THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 217 
 
 "I can not deny the facts. The terrible story 
 which I read, in your flushed face and flashing eye is, 
 no doubt J true, so far as the acts themselves are con- 
 cerned. I can not deny them, because the picture 
 of those mounds and burrows, with their savage, 
 brutish-seeming denizens, was ineradicably seared upon 
 my memory by one glance ; and my ears will forever 
 thrill with the strains of a marvelous chorus welling 
 up from the lips of men, in whose hearts hope must 
 already have been dead. I blush to say it, Ben N^athan, 
 but I speak the simple truth, when I tell you that I 
 never had one atom of admiration for, or pride in, the 
 moral attributes of you Northern people, until I heard 
 the songs that floated one sultry evening from the pes- 
 tilential mire of Anderson ville. I confess, Ben Nathan, 
 that the name of that terrible stockade calls up remem- 
 brance of a sin — a crime against humanity — the stain 
 of which must ever rest upon my people's fame and 
 taint for many a day the history of our civilization. 
 
 "But let us not speak of these things today. The 
 sun is too bright and the face of nature all too peaceful 
 for such dolorous memories. Some other day, when 
 the storm lashes the water into foam and the sky is 
 dark and lowering, I will show you that even these are 
 things not to be forgotten, since they constitute but 
 another proof of that inherent, and, I fear, ineradicable 
 difference which constitutes us two peoples, whether 
 under one government or two. This is a time for 
 brighter themes. Earth and sky are aglow with ten- 
 der radiance, and the soft notes of the wood-thrush 
 Jiidden away in the shadier recesses of this little glen. 
 
218 THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 
 
 seem to call us back to the theme you suggested — the 
 patriotic songs of our American people. 
 
 " Before I come to speak of them, Ben Nathan, per- 
 haps I ought to say something about the principles 
 which underlie all national or patriotic hymnody. I 
 thought it all out over in the prison-camp, ten miles 
 across the head yonder, one day when I was lying 
 somewhat more than half sick in my bunk and listen- 
 ing to the songs of those who guarded us. They were 
 brave and kindly men, nearly all of them veterans half 
 disabled by wounds or hardship. Some of them were 
 beardless boys, and some of them well past the mili- 
 tary age. I was struck with the character of their 
 songs, and thought to myself that these men, whose 
 honesty of purpose I could not deny, had become the 
 unconscious victims of that fanaticism which had for 
 years used this great instrumentality to inspire the 
 northern people with the sacredness of the crusade it 
 waged against slavery. Three years before — I was a 
 college boy then in New England — I had heard the 
 Hutchinsons sing, and had found myself unable to re- 
 sist the thrill of humanitarian sentimentality which 
 was stirred to life, even in tlie dullest breast, by the rap- 
 turous exultation of Whittier, Garrison, and other 
 poets of that day, who may well claim to have been 
 inspired by a zeal for liberty unprecedented for sincer- 
 ity and disinterestedness in any age or clime. I did 
 not think so then. I accounted these men as arch- 
 hypocrites, who Avith hellish cunning had married 
 noble sentiment to flowing numbers, and had used the 
 combination to mislead and corrupt the simple-minded. 
 
THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 219 
 
 " It was only after careful study and close observa- 
 tion of contrasted types that I learned that the patri- 
 otic song, or the song that is based on a patriotic idea, 
 always performs a double function. I used to accept 
 the ancient apothegm about the maker of a people's 
 songs being able to bid defiance to the maker of its 
 laws, at par ; giving no heed to the farther fact that 
 the song-maker himself is bound by inflexible condi- 
 tions, which imperatively curtail his influence and do- 
 main. No rules of art can give his work success. No 
 rythmic skill or deftness of versification is sufiicient. 
 No loftiness of sentiment, fervor of patriotism, or 
 grandeur of diction, nor all of them combined, can 
 make a national or patriotic song which will ever shape 
 a peoples' or a country's destiny. The one essential 
 pre-requisite is that such a song must always express 
 what a people have already thought and felt. Not 
 only that, but it must express a sentiment on which 
 the popular mind has dwelt so long and earnestly that 
 the song seems but the echo of their thought. It be- 
 comes, therefore, first of all things, an exponent of 
 public sentiment, an index of popular feeling. It may 
 intensify or perpetuate such sentiment, but it can 
 never create or inspire a popular thought. The patri- 
 otic song must be a type of the age and people, and its 
 measures must alwa3^s be synchronous with the heart- 
 beat of a national life. 
 
 " Miriam's song, the earliest patriotic rhapsody of 
 the Israelite, throbbing as it does with a thrill of a 
 marvelous deliverance, yet displays amid its exultation 
 etnd savage imprecation of the enemy, that cool 
 
220 THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 
 
 assumption that the enemies of Israel are for that very 
 reason the foes of God, w^hich has ever remained the 
 peculiar characteristic of the Jewish people. Ko one 
 can doubt that this 'was the thought uppermost in the 
 heart of each at that moment of miraculous triumph. 
 Miriam sim^^ly phrased the sentiment of everyone who 
 had come dry-shod through the sea, with the guiding 
 pillar of flame and cloud, and had seen the enemies 
 who had so long oppressed, destroyed by the very in- 
 strumentalities which had wrought their own deliver- 
 ance. It was first effect and then cause — the voice of 
 a day and the inspiration of the ages. Of a like char- 
 acter were the war cries and battle hymns of all 
 ancient peoples, only pitched upon a much lower key 
 to suit the tenor of a baser hfe. 
 
 " The song with which the Englishman has so long 
 cheered himself in victory and upheld the stubborn 
 Anglo-Saxon courage which will not recognize defeat — 
 that adjustable piece of versified devotion, ' God Save 
 the King,' or 'Queen,' as the case may be — is an out- 
 burst of enthusiastic loyalty, not for the person of the 
 sovereign, but for the throne, tlie fiction of British na- 
 tionality. The ' Marseillaise ' is the bursting battle-cry 
 of millions springing up from earth to overturn and 
 avenge the tyranny of centuries. The German nation- 
 al songs are simply crystallizations of the idea of home, 
 the fatherland, nativity, regarded as an impulse to mar- 
 tial prowess. 
 
 " Our own national songs curiously illustrate the 
 same principle. ' Yankee Doodle ' was the type of the 
 Revolutionary era, almost all the songs of which repre- 
 
THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE, 221 
 
 sent a people keenly alive to their own deficiencies, 
 employing the ridicule of their more cultured and ar- 
 rogant enemies to convey a half -jocose defiance. The 
 same spirit continued to inspire that remarkable burst 
 of song with which you people of the ]^orth celebrated 
 the victories of our second struggle with the mother 
 country. JN'one of these really obtained any secure hold 
 upon the people of the South. Even ' Yankee Doodle' 
 continued to have much of the original significance 
 which it possessed when the British soldiery first piped 
 it in derision of the ISTew England yeomanry. What 
 we have generally considered our special national an- 
 thems have been pitched upon a key a little more ex- 
 alted than that of our British cousins, and a little less 
 domestic than that of the German national lyric. ' Hail 
 Columbia ' is openly modeled on • Eule Britannia,' and 
 as a piece of national braggadocio is even less merito- 
 rious. 
 
 " The. Star Spangled Banner ' touches a higher plane 
 of sentiment ; and the picture of the patriot watching 
 in the early morning for the flag the night had hidden, 
 gives force and pathos to the appeal to the God of bat- 
 tles. The burst of grateful acclamation with which, in 
 the last stanza, deliverance in the past, protection for 
 the future, the peaceful home and the scath of devas- 
 tating war, are all blended in one swift-rushing pano- 
 rama of picture-painting words — is almost worthy of 
 the national life it commemorated, besides representing 
 fairly well the devotional spirit of that time. We had 
 not then passed the age of self. Patriotism knew" but 
 two great impulses — devotion to the land of one's birth 
 
222 THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 
 
 or adoption, and the assertion of individual right by 
 the masses of an oppressed people. The Covenanter 
 spirit — that strange compound of the Anglican sense 
 of duty, and the Jewish idea of Jehovah, the stern, 
 inflexible avenger — still ruled the world. The sanctity 
 of humanity was yet uncomprehended. The nation 
 looked to the God of their fathers, sang his praises, and 
 implored his protection in the fervid strains of this 
 much-abused song : 
 
 Oh, thus be it ever when freemen shall stand 
 Between their loved homes and the war's desolation. 
 
 Self-preservation, deliverance from evil which threat- 
 ened not only the land as an abstraction, but the peo- 
 ple and their homes, w^ere the motives which stirred 
 then the popular heart. The struggle for national ex- 
 istence was still fresh enough in the hearts of our peo- 
 ple to give a peculiar force to the verse, 
 
 " Praise the power which hath made and preserved us a Nation." 
 
 The justice of our cause — the defensive w^ar of a young 
 nationality — is alleged as the chief hope of victory and 
 the reason of our trust in God. 
 
 " Taken as a whole, Ben JN'athan, I am inclined to 
 count the ' Star Spangled Banner' the broadest, noblest, 
 sweetest, and tenderest of all national lyrics up to the 
 beginning of our great civil war. Its dignity is of that 
 unconscious kind that best of all befits a nation of free- 
 men. There is not a hint of revenge or barbarism or 
 boastfulness in it. It is Miriam's hymn of rejoicing- 
 refined and purified by the Christian sentiment of 
 home, the aspirations of a newly-planted national life, 
 
THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 223 
 
 iind the trustful hope of a new-born civihzation. Like 
 all that came before the climacteric era of our national 
 life, however, it is infinitely below that marvelous burst 
 of song that ushered in the conflict and inspired every 
 step in the onward march of your armies. You have 
 scorned and forgotten the inspiration of that day, and 
 your children hardly know the words of the old songs ; 
 but the spirit which they typified, and the devotion they 
 aroused, were the real cause of the success of your 
 arms. To that spirit is due the triumph of the past 
 and the peace of the present, and to it the future must 
 look for its security and glory." 
 August 21, 1885. 
 
THE SONGS OF TAVO PEOPLES. 
 
 I ASKED Pascal Raines, after I had heard him set 
 forth in such appreciative language the merits of 
 '' The Star-Spangled Banner," what need there was of a 
 new National song, since this embodied such noble senti- 
 ments and embraced no Avord that could in any man- 
 ner affect the sensibilities of any section. Did he think, 
 I inquired, that " The Bonnie Blue Flag " had usurped 
 its place in the sentiments of a portion of the people ! 
 " No," he answered promptly, " it is not that. As 
 a popular melody 'The Bonnie Blue Flag' was hardly 
 a success even at the South, Avhere it was formally and 
 professedly adopted as the acknowdedged and au- 
 thoritative expression of public sentiment. It is 
 another illustration of the fact that such songs can not 
 be made up according to a prescribed formula. So to 
 speak, it was the recognized official metrical exponent 
 of the patriotic sentiment of the Confederacy, but it 
 had very httle hold on the popular heart. It was sung 
 in the parlor, and was the pet of good society, but 
 somehow or other it never seemed to stir any feeling 
 that could be accounted deep or permanent, at a time 
 when blood was at' fever heat, and each day's life 
 expunged the record of yesterday's sentimentalities. 
 It was no doubt intended that it should take the place 
 of the old National anthem in the minds of the South- 
 
 224 
 
THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. - 225 
 
 ern people, but it signally failed to accomplish the task 
 assigned to it. 
 
 " Perhaps one reason for this was the curious uncer- 
 tainty that prevailed so long as to what really was the 
 Confederate flag, and the prominence given both in the 
 field and in the states themselves to the different state 
 flags. The distinction between the flag of the Con- 
 federacy and the battle-flag under which its soldiers so 
 long marched to victory may also have had something 
 to do with it. At all events, both the flag and the 
 song written in its honor seem to have taken but a 
 slight hold upon the hearts of the people. I have my- 
 self been surprised at the transitory character of the 
 memories attaching to them. Even the soldiers of the 
 Confederacy seem to have had no romantic attach- 
 ment for its flag — at least none that survives the mem- 
 ory of defeat. I doubt if half my surviving comrades 
 could to-day tell what the flag was like which they 
 followed so faithfully through the varying fortunes of 
 four years of strife. Probably no great revolution ever 
 had so evanescent an emblem. The ' stars and bars,' 
 even in the heat of the conflict, did not seem to have 
 any great hold upon the popular fancy. I think " Stone- 
 wall Jackson " was right in the statement generally 
 attributed to him, that it was ' a great mistake to try 
 to divide the IN'ational flag as well as the National 
 territory.' The truth is, that both in name and fact, 
 the ' stars and bars ' were but a feeble imitation of the 
 ' stars and stripes.' If a strong distinctive emblem had 
 been adopted it would have been remembered both by 
 friend and foe, and would have constituted an undying 
 15 
 
226 THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 
 
 feature of the romance which is sure to blossom on the 
 grave of unsuccessful revolution. 
 
 "No, it was not this flag — an intended counterfeit 
 of tile one it was designed especially to oppose and 
 subvert — nor the song consecrated to its exaltation 
 that lessened the power of the ' Star-spangled Banner ' 
 as a National melody. The simple fact is that the idea 
 it was designed especially to perpetuate and enforce, 
 the idea of national preservation and security against 
 the assaults of foreign power, lost its force and interest 
 in the presence of a more intense and vital thought. 
 The second war with England not only put an end to 
 all fear of invasion on the part of our people, but the 
 songs of exultation which its brief but brilliant record 
 evoked had hardly become familiar when the shadow 
 of a still greater danger began to show itself in our 
 life. The invader was forgotten in the heat and fury 
 of that internal discord which culminated in the war, 
 not for the dissolution of the Union, but for the par- 
 tition of its power and the duplication of its fran- 
 chises. 
 
 "Did it ever strike you as a curious thing, Ben 
 Nathan, that the revolt of the Southern people was 
 intended not to subvert, destroy, modify, or avoid the 
 Government of the United States, but to establish 
 another nationality not only of the same general char- 
 acter, but even in its details substantially identical with 
 it ? It is, perhaps, the first instance in history in 
 which revolution has not at least demanded change, and 
 in which sedition could only offer a vague apprehension 
 in excuse for rts acts. Yet that apprehension was 
 
THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 227 
 
 based on an instinctive appreciation of radical and 
 incurable differences which had already parted the 
 country in twain long before the first gun was trained 
 against the walls of Sumter. The shadow of this great 
 crisis — the knowledge of our supreme danger as a 
 nation — had rested over us for well nigh half a century, 
 growing every moment more and more sharply out- 
 lined. A generation had already grown up in its 
 umbrage. A quarter of a century before, dismember- 
 ment had been openly and persistently advocated. 
 From that time onward it had been a matter of con- 
 tinuous and hardly covert threat. The shadow of 
 sedition eclipsed the fear of invasion. We lost our 
 terror of the stranger, in our apprehension of forcible 
 partition among the heirs of our glory. 
 
 ''It is said that the lightest scratch upon the heart 
 — the merest touch of the sharpest instrument or the 
 point of the finest needle — thrills the strongest nature 
 with the most abject and overwhelming fear. It is no 
 wonder the nation trembled. It was cut across the 
 heart by the sharp sword of controversy. Its vital 
 tissues were pricked by the adamantine spear-points of 
 irreconciliable difference. The climacteric conflict be- 
 tween right and wrong was impending, and in the 
 dimly seen havoc which lay between the related forces 
 we forgot to be grateful for past deliverance, or appre- 
 hensive of future harm from foreign power. The 
 ' Star-spangled Banner' lost its significance as a national 
 anthem w^hen the conscience of a part of our people was 
 ready to put individual right above national unity, while 
 another wing were ready to subvert the national exist- 
 
228 THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 
 
 ence in order to secure legal privilege and perpetuate, 
 social rank. 
 
 The South put the right to own and control the 
 slave above the national peace, and the abolitionist was 
 willing to see the Union disrupted because the shield of 
 its authority protected and perpetuated slavery. Is'o 
 wonder the nation forgot the invader. The germ of 
 peril lay hidden in its own life. Liberty anathematized 
 the Federal compact because it permitted slavery to 
 exist. Slavery abjured the union of states because it 
 apprehended an inclination not to observe the letter of 
 the compact. It was a confl-ict between the written 
 law on which our nation claims to rest its existence, 
 and the ' higher law ' to which, it was claimed, our 
 civilization is due. There was this curious condition 
 attendant upon this conflict : Whichever view pre- 
 vailed, the nation was threatened with destruction. 
 This fact was apparent to every one and for a quarter 
 of a century formed the basis of continuous and success- 
 ful entreaty addressed alternately to the lovers of 
 liberty and the champions of slavery. The former 
 were besought to moderate their zeal for the right, in 
 the hope that time would bring a peaceful and happy 
 remedy in some far future, when greed and prejudice 
 should relax their hold upon human nature. The lat- 
 ter were in like manner importuned by the same class 
 of doubting patriots, to wait and trust to time to teach 
 the liberty -loving fanatics of the ]N"orth that the Union 
 with slavery was preferable to liberty without the 
 Union. This conflict, in its various phases, dwarfed all 
 other thought. Very naturally it left its impress on our 
 
THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 229 
 
 popular songs, and in the entl inspired the noblest 
 patriotic hymnody which the world has ever known. 
 " Perhaps nothing more curious than the develop- 
 ment which followed m the line of patriotic song was 
 ever known. I do not refer to the distinctively con- 
 troversial or doctrinal songs, which constituted a spe- 
 cific part of the armament of the Abohtionists. The 
 old Garrisonian war-ciy was a fit example of rhythmic 
 arguments, now rusty and forgotten, like old armor on 
 an ancient castle w^all : 
 
 We will speak out — we will be heard, 
 
 Though all earth's systems crack, 
 We will not bate a single word 
 
 Nor take a letter back. 
 
 "They were bright and effective weapons then, 
 however, and many of them of celestial temper. Most 
 of them were too keen for anything but warfare, and 
 did not yield themselves readily to simulated senti- 
 ment. With rare exceptions, they w^ere wielded only 
 by professionals, and cannot be said to have become in 
 any proper sense popular songs. 
 
 " Such was not the case, however, with that other 
 class of songs which the fixing of public attention upon 
 the neo^ro no doubt brou^^ht into existence. I mean, of 
 course, those curious blendings of exaggerated senti- 
 ment and pathetic drollery v/hich permitted the mar- 
 riage of minor chords and a jig movement, known as 
 'negro melodies.' Intentionally or unintentionally, 
 these melodies became instrumentalities in the great 
 conflict. Perhaps their primary purpose was ridicule. 
 At thio time no one can tell. It may have been hoped 
 
230 THE VETEKAN AND HIS PIPE. 
 
 that, in this case as in all others, familiarity would 
 breed contempt. If so, the purpose failed. However 
 absurd the sentiment or exaggerated the action may 
 have been, the refram of the slave's sad fate Avas sure 
 to crop out somewhere in the rude syllables, and find 
 proper setting in its quaint and bizarre measures. 
 
 " Perhaps the most startling and unforeseen incident 
 connected with the introduction of the negro melody, 
 was the amazing popularity of this class of songs among 
 the people of the South. Though some of them seemed 
 to have been expressly designed to direct attention to, 
 and awaken sympathy for, the pitiable injustice of the 
 slave's hard fate, no public sentiment could restrain 
 their spread among the Southern people. Slavery has 
 unquestionably left a negroid stamp upon Southern 
 thought and sentiment, just as it has broadened our 
 vowels, strengthened our labials and modified almost 
 every form of our speech. It was a game of give and 
 take — the white man taking purposely the slave's lib- 
 erty — his unrequited toil — and giving unconsciously 
 year by year something of his own manhood to trans- 
 form the African into an American. The master was 
 undoubtedly compelled by the irony of fate to bear 
 something of his slave's burden and take on tongue and 
 brain the stamp of his generic attributes. Out of these 
 facts it arose that the song to which the footsteps of 
 your soldiers echoed on their unresting march to vic- 
 tory, was but the creaking of the gallows-tree at 
 Charlestown, made comprehensible by words irrelevant 
 and quaint enough to suit themselves to the life the 
 maniac-martyr had lived and the unlawful but bencfi- 
 
THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 231 
 
 cent purpose for which he had died. At the same time, 
 the South took from the negro's hps the song which it 
 not only made its real national anthem, but with strange 
 inconsistency constituted also the battle-cry of a con- 
 flict waged for the perpetuation of slavery. 
 
 " These two songs were the product and types of 
 the two great forces which our civilization had devel- 
 oped. The symbol and demonstration of the two peo- 
 ples which had resulted from our national life. They 
 were national songs, each expressing in a quaint and 
 unique manner the dominant thought of a distinct and 
 peculiar people. The Abolition sentiment of the North 
 had sailed so long under false colors that even this song, 
 which so faithfully forecasted its final triumph, did it 
 under a figure so obscure that it could even then be 
 readily disowned. So the army which marched to its 
 resonant swinging measures, the soldiers who sang this 
 strange, weird anthem of universal liberty and were 
 inspired by the seductive glory of its sentiments, fought 
 for two years under the express and repeated declara- 
 tions of their government, the press, and the people of 
 the IN'orth, that they had no hostile purpose or inimical 
 design against the institution of slavery. 
 
 " Chanting hourly the praise of the prophet who 
 liad foretold its downfall and made himself the first 
 voluntary victim in the crusade for its overthrow, they 
 persistently denied tlie leadership of the soul which 
 marched ever on and on with them to the fulfillment of 
 the purpose for which he had lived and died. 
 
 " 1 am sorry to say it, Ben Nathan, but there is no 
 denying the assertion that the people of the North went 
 
232 THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 
 
 into battle under false colors. You said one thing with 
 your lips and in your hearts thought another and quite 
 different thing. Your words were intended to induce 
 the South to trust to the sincerity of your declaration 
 that you did not desire the overthrow of slavery, and 
 would continue in the future even more faithfully than 
 in the past, to cherish and protect the institution. But 
 the chosen battle-song of your mustering legions spoke 
 the real truth. The thought, the soul of John Brown, 
 hidden beneath specious words and subtly grotesque 
 phrasing, was the animating impulse. You fought 
 shamefacedly for the liberty of the slave. For that 
 liberty you were not afraid to face death upon the field 
 of battle ; but you were so afraid of the taunts and 
 jeers of the white people of the South — you had 
 shrunk so long from the obloquy of being called a na- 
 tion of negro-lovers and negro-worshipers — that it 
 was not until the pains of continuous defeat had dead- 
 ened your super-sensitiveness and brought you face to 
 face with the certain prospect of ultimate disaster, that 
 you were brave enough to avow your real motive, and 
 proclaim the liberty which you had all the time secretly 
 hoped to achieve. 
 
 " On the other hand, the South mustered her hosts to 
 the quaint Africo-American strains of " Dixie." With 
 us, at least, there was no false pretense. We avowed 
 slavery to be the corner-stone of our revolt, and hung 
 its colors on our helm. With instinctiv^e scorn and in 
 brave defiance of the spirit of your mystical and equiv- 
 ocal ode, we caught from the slave's lips the measures 
 which expressed with contemptuous defiance the dis- 
 
THE VETEEAN AND HIS PIPE. 233 
 
 tinctiveness and perfectibility of the South, as a nation 
 — a people — an organized existence. Words could 
 not more forcibly express the exultant content of a 
 peculiar and distinctive national! t}^ Our " Dixie " told 
 the whole story. It was the emblem of our chosen 
 land — a distinct nationality. Even "yet you know 
 nothing of its significance and I could not elucidate to 
 you its force. It meant our land — oior life — the mys- 
 tic potency of a peculiar people. It was the banner- 
 cry of the South — as it ^vas — as we were determined 
 that it should remain. We fought exulting in the 
 wrong, the scath and the peril of slavery — proud of 
 all those things that in the future must cover us with 
 shame ! You fought as if ashamed of the liberty you 
 yearned to achieve, but dared not write upon your 
 banners. 
 
 " So the dirge of ' Old John Brow^n ' went wailing 
 on to the victory which its instruments have made haste 
 to disavow ; while the defiant strains of '' Dixie " rang 
 out as cheerily after Appomattox as on the morning of 
 the first Bull Kun. It is one of those strange melo- 
 dies that not only inspires and prepares for victory, 
 but consoles defeat with something of that faith which 
 would not feel discouragement, with which the slave 
 looked forward to the jubilee." r 
 
 August 28, 1885. 
 
THE CLIMAX OF DEYOTIOK 
 
 I WAS much impressed by the views Avhich Pascal 
 Raines had expressed, and after he had left my room 
 and I had heard the somewhat heavy footfall which — 
 despite the best that mechanical skill can do for the 
 unfortunate, will mark the steps of him who wears an 
 artificial limb — as he Avent down the long corridor to 
 his own room. I sat for a long time. Blower, taking- 
 deep suspirations of the balmy vapor which rises from 
 the incense burning in your bowl and peopling the 
 azure clouds that rose before my dreaming eyes with 
 battling hosts that chanted as they fought wierd songs 
 whose grotesque melody was full of strange mystical 
 significance. In my vision these were transformed into 
 mighty forces, and one of them — as grim of feature 
 as those gnomic faces which the earthquake and the 
 tempest carve upon the mountain's granite outlines — 
 this one strode calm and unruffled through the mighty 
 tumult, cast down his grim, sardonic enemy, and held 
 him lightly but secure upon the ground. And while I 
 watched, the giant faded, and in his place a great obse- 
 quious lackey stood, who lifted from the earth the 
 captive, brushed the dust of battle off, and then stood, 
 cap in hand, waiting to do his bidding. Somehow, 
 Blower, this queer vision which I saw so plainh^ pic- 
 tured in the smoke wreaths, pursued my fancy all night 
 
 234 
 
THE VETEKAN AND HIS PIPE. 235 
 
 long ; and in my dreams I mourned for that calm pres- 
 ense, giant-like and yet benign, which strode across the 
 field of strife, without one trace of passion, resolute 
 yet kind, and brought an end of conflict. I seemed to 
 love the uncouth, mighty presence, and to feel as if the 
 spruce, obsequious lackey who had come to take his 
 place was hardly an equivalent for his loss. It was but 
 a dreaming fancy, however^ and no doubt a very foolish 
 one. 
 
 The morning sun dispelled these morbid fancies, 
 
 and when our foeman-friend came to mv room 
 
 t/ 
 
 for an after-breakfast whiff — a common custom now 
 that the bass have stopped biting for a time — I was 
 almost ready to laugh over them. Such w^as not his 
 mood, however. He is rarely so mirthfully inclined 
 of late as was his wont. I cannot understand why 
 it is. He seems to have an ineradicable fondness for 
 speculating in regard to our National life and public 
 affairs. Yet no one would dream of regarding him as 
 a politician. He is a contemner of parties except as in- 
 strumentalities for the accomplishment of great pur- 
 poses, and mocks at the line-spun theories of those w4io 
 would substitute prescribed systems and inflexible rules 
 for public conscience and the enlightened judgment of 
 the people. Unlike our best and wisest, he does not 
 seem to think that the past died with yesterday. 
 Somehow or other he claims that in its elements it still 
 subsists. He is fond of referring to ''Time's eternal 
 repetend — Yesterday, To-day, and To-morrow." This 
 he counts an existence which is indivisible and yet dis- 
 tinctly tripartite. To him the good and evil of To-day 
 
236 THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 
 
 are but the fruits of Yesterday's seeding. The first 
 step toward healing the woes of To-day, or securing 
 the tranquiUty of To-morrow, he declares to be a full 
 knowledge of Yesterday's good and evil, its strength and 
 its infirmity. Because of a neglect of this knowledge 
 on the part of the present — a failure to recognize this 
 fundamental truth of history — he apprehends vital 
 error, if not grave disaster, in the future. 
 
 Last night I found it well nigh impossible to resist 
 the influence of his foreboding. But this morning I 
 pointed to the sun shining bright above the rippling 
 Avaters and exclaimed reproachfully : " Behold a new 
 day. Now, 
 
 while the West bin red to see, 
 
 And storms be none, and pirates flee 
 Why sing " The Brides of Enderby ?" 
 
 " Do I ?" he asked, as he filled his pipe and sank 
 into the willow rocker that creaked complainingiy un- 
 der his goodly weight. 
 
 " Do you '?" I answered. '' Has not your merciless 
 dissection of our country's patriotic melodies sufficed 
 to fill the night with dolorous visions?" 
 
 Then I told him of my dream as if he had been a 
 soothsayer from whom I sought its interpretation. 
 
 "My good Ben Nathan," he said, after a few con- 
 templative puffs at the long root stem which he twisted 
 carelessly in his fingers as he spoke, ^ it needs no 
 Joseph to translate your dream. It was indeed but the 
 inevitable conclusion of that course of thought we had 
 so pleasantly pursued together before I bade you good 
 night. The consciousness which you strive to slay by 
 
THE VETEEAN AND HIS PIPE. 237 
 
 specious reasoning asserted itself in your dream. Learn 
 from it that the accidents of warfare do not make or 
 unmake peoples. Boundary lines do not differentiate 
 populations. The line of demarkation is traced in 
 divergent natures and contrasted impulses. You do 
 not realize even yet what the difference between ' Old 
 John Brown ' and ' Dixie ' really signified. 
 
 " To me it is a matter of amazement that the intelli- 
 gence and culture of the North should be willing to 
 subordinate or even to ignore the grandest element of 
 your past. Nay, I will go farther, Ben Nathan, and 
 say the grandest impulse that ever inspired a nation 
 to engage in conflict. Men have fought only too 
 often for greed and glory. The love of conquest has 
 inspired to gallant deeds whose mere recital has thrilled 
 the pulses of unnumbered generations. Men have 
 wrought marvels of heroism for home and country. 
 Warfare has been made the instrument of faith, and 
 men have sought with unquestioning zeal to secure a 
 peaceful immortality for themselves, by compelling 
 others to abjure the errors of unbelief. No people 
 Avere ever before inspired Avith so high, so noble, so 
 unselfish a purpose, however, as that which animated 
 the North in its struggle with the Confederacy." 
 
 "Yes, indeed," I murmured, in modest recognition 
 of this overwhelming commendation, '^ the preservation 
 of the Union, not merely for ourselves, but for you, 
 also, to enjoy, was a glorious purpose." 
 
 " Yes, Ben Nathan," Pascal Eaines responded, with 
 a laugh which was not altogether complimentary in its 
 tone, " that was a good purpose which you professed, 
 
238 THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 
 
 but it was base and mean in comparison with the one 
 you denied and tried to conceaL As a motive for war, 
 the mere preservation of the Union — the assertion of 
 the national sovereignty over certain definite hmits — 
 was neither an unusual nor an especially exalted impulse 
 to an aggressive warfare such as the Nation really 
 waged. It did not compare in nobility and grandeur 
 with the motive that inspired the Southern people. 
 They fought for their homes — ' their altars and their 
 fires' in very truth. I will even go farther and say 
 that they fought for exactly the same principle that 
 animated our forefathers in their rebellion against 
 Great Britian — the collective right of a people to gov- 
 ern themselves according to their own ideas. 
 
 '^ I know it makes you wince, my friend. You have 
 been accustomed to think that all the right, all the 
 glory of devotion to principle, was on your side the line, 
 and all that was base and selfish and unjust on the 
 other. Yet I tell you plainly, Ben Nathan, that if you 
 but ' stand upon your declaration,' as the lawyers say, 
 the verdict of history must, and ought to be, entered 
 up against you. The ethical principles which govern 
 nations and peoples in the assertion and maintenance 
 of sovereignty are not yet very clearly defined. In 
 what we, with a quaint, almost farcical humor, call 
 international law, the end always justifies the means, 
 and might is almost always the sole criterion of 
 right. 
 
 " The result of our war has sanctified the claim you 
 make of having fought for the preservation of national 
 unity. On that ground alone, however, it is hardly 
 
THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 239 
 
 more defensible than the German conquest of Alsace- 
 Lorraine. 
 
 " Did you ever stop to analyze the equities involved 
 upon this issue ? Let us put aside the question of state- 
 rights and admit that your interpretation of the Con- 
 stitution was correct, and what have we ? Our fore- 
 fathers, so to speak, had made a contract that they and 
 their descendants should constitute a people — a l^ation, 
 if you please. What moral right had they to bind a 
 people for all time, or what moral right had a portion 
 of that people to compel another portion to submit 
 unwillingly to its continuance ? By legal analog}^ we 
 might be termed tenants in common in whom the right 
 of partition always resides. It was not the question of 
 the right of a majority to control and subjugate an 
 interspersed and factious minority, but of one section 
 or people to hold by force another seeking national 
 autonomy for themselves. It was not an attempt to 
 overthrow or subvert an existing government. It can- 
 not properly be termed sedition or rebellion. It was 
 merely the spontaneous action of a whole people, occu- 
 pying a definite portion of territory, to establish for 
 themselves an independent government suited to their 
 own wants, conditions and ideas. 
 
 "It was no insignificant fragment, either. Of 
 twelve millions of people there was scarcely a tithe of 
 that race who alone were recognized as citizens — with 
 whom rested the right and power of the States — who 
 either felt or expressed any dissatisfaction with the action 
 of the majority. Of course there were some dissentients 
 and curiously enough both sides, from entirely opposite 
 
240 THE VETEEAN AND HIS PIPE. 
 
 motives, have sought to magnify their numbers. You 
 have done this for the sake of making it appear that 
 the movement was factional and not territorial. We 
 have done the same to magnify our own prowess by 
 showing how hard it was to conquer even a divided 
 South. One of the shrewdest things that man of mar- 
 velous sagacity, Abraham Lincoln, did was to encour- 
 age the formation of regiments, nominally recruited in 
 the rebellious states, but really drawing the better part 
 of their strength from Xorthern States whose own 
 quotas were already full. I remember that we once 
 captured the muster-roll of a so-called Kentucky regi- 
 ment of Federal troops. It showed hardly Kentuckians 
 enough among its rank and file to constitute a decent 
 company. The same was true of such corps as ' Brown- 
 low's Tennesseans,' a whole company of which, I have 
 been told, was raised in one county of the Western 
 Reserve in Ohio. 
 
 " Despite these auplicate pretenses, however, there 
 was probably never a revolutionary movement in his- 
 tory that commanded such universal assent of the 
 people primarily affected by it as the formation of 
 the Southern Confederacy. Leaving out of consid- 
 eration the colored race, the effort to sever our 
 Federal relations may properly be said to have 
 been unanimous. Men doubted, hesitated, and proph- 
 esied disaster, but in the end not only succumbed, but 
 vied with the most rabid in the maintenance of the cause 
 of Southern independence. So far as the question of 
 right and wrong, as involved in our pet theory of the 
 right of self-government, is concerned, in this proposed 
 
 II 
 
THE VETEEAN AND HIS PIPE. 2tl:l 
 
 disruption of the Federal Union, the right unquestion- 
 ably lay with us. If three millions of people had the 
 right to proclaim independence because self-government 
 is a natural right, then certainly eight millions of 
 whites, separated from the people of the INorth by 
 known and visible boundaries, and by still more marked 
 differences of character and tradition, must have had a 
 right to claim a similar political autonomy. 
 
 " This is the way the matter presented itself to the 
 Southern people. We thought we had a right to self- 
 government because we were a distinct and peculiar 
 people, occupying a distinct and separate territory. It 
 was for this that we fought, and it was in confident 
 faith that we would receive divine aid in support of 
 this principle that we wrote ' Deo Vindlce ' upon our 
 banner, and appealed with confidence to the arbitra- 
 ment of the sword. We not only fought for what we 
 believed to be a divine right, but we merely waged a 
 defensive warfare against those who invaded the terri- 
 tory of the states whose people had declared in favor 
 of adhesion to the Confederacy. ' Dixie ' fitly symbol- 
 ized our motive and purpose. We fought for a distinct 
 and peculiar people, for control of a specific territory, 
 for a new nationality — ' Dixie Land.' We were re- 
 solved ' to live and die ' in this newly-born, unrecog- 
 nized ^' Dixie," and were wilhng to live and die for her 
 liberty — for the right of a great people to govern 
 themselves." 
 
 " It may be a new view of the matter to you, Ben 
 Nathan. The faculty of seeing the other side is not a 
 very usual one. It was thus that the question present- 
 16 
 
M2 THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 
 
 ed itself to our minds, laying aside all quirks and 
 technicalities, and considering only the great principle 
 which underlies the American theory of self-govern- 
 ment. Viewed from that standpoint, I have never yet 
 seen any occasion to modify the conviction of a quar- 
 ter of a century ago. If we had succeeded, tlie world 
 would have indorsed this theory and applauded our 
 devotion to principle. 
 
 " You are wrong, however, in declaring the mainte- 
 nance of the Union to have been the controlling mo- 
 tive of your people and government. Right or wrong, 
 absurd or wise, maniac or martyr, the soul of John 
 Brown not only marched with your troops but inspired 
 them with a spirit of marvelous self-sacrifice. Your 
 soldiers fought neither for fame nor dominion. The 
 lust of conquest never influenced their hearts. No 
 spirit of revenge or prospect of advantage spurred 
 them to the gigantic efforts required to defeat and 
 crush a people so brave and a nationality so instinct 
 with harmonious vitality as our confederacy. It was a 
 purpose nobler tlian tlie love of liberty, grander than 
 the instinct of patriotism. Shirk it as you will, deny 
 it as you may, the one crowning glory of your part in 
 that great struggle — the one thing that for all time 
 will mark it as unprecedented in moral grandeur — is 
 the fact that you fought bravely, died willingly, and 
 triumphed modestly, not for your own advantage, not 
 to secure your children's liberties, but to give liberty 
 and equality of right and privilege to a people debased, 
 untried, branded Avith the mark of servitude, and sepa- 
 rated by the insuperable wall of race from your appre- 
 
THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 213 
 
 ciative sympathy or intimate alliance. You overthrew 
 the Confederacy in order that you might free the 
 slave. 
 
 " The sense of the dignity and glory of individual 
 right had become so ingrained in the Northern mind 
 that no peril could daunt, no difficulty discourage, and 
 no hardship deter them from the accomplishment of 
 this purpose. This was the great fact of that epoch, 
 the real work of the Xorthern armies, and the real im- 
 pulse which inspired the Northern mind. The preser- 
 vation of the Union was but an incident — the means 
 for the achievement of the greater end — the cover of a 
 grander purpose. It was this that lifted your people 
 to a pinnacle of unselfish and heroic devotion that had 
 never been attained by any popular movement before. 
 You fought your bi'others and kinsmen, those to 
 whom the ties of race and the traditions of the past 
 bound you with peculiar force, in order to lift up the 
 poor, the weak and despised — the alien by race and in- 
 ferior by tradition — because convinced that he had 
 a right to be free ! I confess, Ben Nathan, that when I 
 think of this I gladly doff my hat to the ' Yankee ' 
 whom in many respects I but little esteem, cheerfully 
 admitting that in this act — no matter whether it was a 
 wise or foolish one — he reached a level of common 
 purpose and manifested an unselfishness in his devotion 
 to a glorious idea, which no other people in any age or 
 clime have ever yet attained. In good or evil results 
 the emancipation of four millions of slaves must ere 
 long eclipse in importance the preservation of the na- 
 tional territory from rupture, and the power of the 
 
244 THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 
 
 republic from impairment. The world already knows 
 it better as a struggle for liberty than as a war for ter- 
 ritorial unity. Almost under the shadow of the pole, 
 the Finnish peasant reads today the story of our strug- 
 gle under the name and style of ' The History of the 
 War for Emancipation.' That is what it means to the 
 rest of the world, and what it must ultimately mean to 
 us. The greater fact must ultimately swallow up the 
 lesser. 
 
 "I cannot understand why you, as a people, and 
 especially those who claim to be wiser than others, 
 should so persistently and shamefacedly disavow and 
 ignore the very thing that sheds the brightest luster on 
 your fame. For my part, I regret most sincerely that 
 the giant of your dream is dead. 
 
 " How came I to be thus appreciative of the im- 
 pulse that held the North like a sleuth-hound on the 
 trail of the confident and exulting South? I do not 
 wonder at your inquiry, my friend. The persistency 
 with which even then you denied the real purpose 
 that animated your hosts and inspired your people, 
 and set up instead a meaner and lower purpose, may 
 well have hidden from the eyes of foemen the real 
 grandeur of your devotion. I heard it better defined 
 by one of my own comrades in the very heat of that 
 struggle, than it ever has been by any of the golden- 
 mouthed eulogists of your victory. We were in winter 
 quarters on the banks of the Rapidan, when the Proc- 
 lamation, which was the fulfillment of Lincoln's threat 
 of three month's before, reached us. Till that moment, 
 few of us believed that he would really stand up to 
 
THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE, 2tt5 
 
 his promise. One of my messmates read it aloud. 
 There was a moment of silence. Then one of them 
 spoke up and said : ' It is all over with us now, boys. 
 A people fighting for their own liberty is well-nigh 
 invincible, but one fighting for the liberty of another^ 
 and an alien race, can never he withstood ! ' 
 
 " It was not till some months afterward, however, 
 that I fully realized the truth my comrade had ex- 
 pressed. You know what took me to the prison you 
 have so fitly denominated a ' pen ' at Andersonville. 
 Your letter had informed me that you were a prisoner 
 in our hands, and I left my couch of convalescence to 
 go there upon the chance of finding you. It was hardly 
 a day's ride from Buckhead, and though there was 
 only a chance, I did not feel justified in omitting to 
 avail myself of even a possible opportunity to exem- 
 plify the comradeship we had pledged to each other on 
 the battlefield. On my arrival I learned that no offi- 
 cers were confined there, and knew my journey was 
 *in vain. I declined an invitation, not very heartily 
 given, as I thought, to go within the stockade, but 
 climbed up to the sentry-walk and looked over. I can 
 not tell the horror of that scene. It was nearly sun- 
 down of a hot autumn day. The wretchedness de- 
 picted in the faces of that squalid, unprotected 
 multitude was unspeakable. I could hear the soughing 
 of the wind in the pines beyond, but they had neither 
 breath nor shade. The stench, even where I stood, was 
 sickening. Because I had been a prisoner myself, I no 
 doubt pitied them the more. I guessed what they must 
 endure, though I only dimly imagined the full horror 
 
24:6 THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 
 
 of their fate. As I turned away the notes of song 
 
 arose from that squahcl mass. I paused and listened — 
 
 hstened to the very end of that most remarkable paean 
 
 of self -sacri lice that ever inspired an army or a people 
 
 to suffer and achieve for another's sake. As I rode 
 
 away in the gloaming that follows quick upon our 
 
 southern sunset, the words went with me, and have 
 
 never left my memory : 
 
 ' In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea, 
 With a glory in His bosom that transfigures you and me ; 
 As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free.' 
 
 " There is an anthem, Ben Xathan, that swallows 
 up in moral grandeur all the songs of patriotic purport 
 from Miriam's time till now. It marks the climax 
 of human devotion. 'Perhaps for a good man 
 some would even dare to die,' is the extreme limit of 
 the apostle's idea of merely human self-sacrifice. But 
 out of that sweltering, fetid prison-pen, into the silent 
 nio-ht, came the exultant chorus of thousands who stood 
 in the very presence of a lingering and terrible death. • 
 
 ' As He died to make men holy, let lis die to make men free ! ' 
 
 " They were soldiers of your army, confronting the 
 most terrible of deaths, rejoicing in their immolation 
 for the sake of humanity ! They were private soldiers, 
 ' enlisted men,' according to the muster rolls, volun- 
 teers who had stepped out of the ranks of your IN'orth- 
 ern life, for what ? 
 
 ' As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free! ' 
 '' The noxious air brought to my ears this answer. 
 From that hour I reverenced the Yankee soldier — not 
 for his superior valor, for in that we were his equal — 
 
THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 247 
 
 not for his fortitude and devotion, for in them my 
 comrades could not be excelled — but because of the 
 sublimity of self-sacrifice which impelled him to do 
 and suffer for others what we counted it heroism to 
 dare for ourselves ! I have had more confidence in 
 the final outcome of emancipation because of this 
 memory. I can not see how any good is to come from 
 it yet, but I can not think that the liberty bought with 
 the blood of men inspired by such a motive can result 
 in ultimate evil to humanity. 
 
 " Do you wonder that I sometimes despise a people 
 who will not only let such a spirit die and be forgotten, 
 but even stoutly deny that it ever possessed them? 
 How do I know that it is dead, and why do I say it is 
 forgotten ? Look at the eulogies pronounced over the 
 grave of your great leader. In prose and verse how 
 many have spoken in his memory ! Yet his highest 
 honor — the fact that he was the chosen instrument for 
 carrying into effect the marvelous promise of a race's 
 liberation — has hardly been thought worthy of men- 
 tion by most of them. How do I know it is forgotten ? 
 I have asked every young lady I have heard singing 
 since I came among you, to favor me with ' The Battle 
 Hymn of the Eepublic,' and only found one who had 
 ever heard it. Yoii have not forgotten it, of course. My 
 old charger even yet pricks up his ears when he hears 
 a bugle note. But I tliink the staid and useful animals 
 who share his paddock with him, regard the old war- 
 horse as a trifle crazy at such times. You remind me 
 of him, now and then, Ben Nathan," 
 
 Septemreii 4, 1885. 
 
JOmED OE PAETED. 
 
 THE pleasant outing is ended, Blower. The sum- 
 mer heats are over and the summer birds have 
 flown. The last bass has been landed. Tiie bright 
 waters of the bay will sparkle no more for us except 
 in memory. The gentle motion of the tossing boat will 
 come to us only in dreams. 'No friendly voice will 
 break upon our reverie when my lips clasp your amber 
 mouth-piece and your fragrant breath rises drowsily 
 about me after the day's labors are over. We have 
 parted with the friend who was a foeman, and the 
 fisher-guide who was a comrade, in the long ago. 
 
 It was a curious parting. Why is it that we assume 
 that all tender sentiment belongs to woman's king- 
 dom ? Sadness and love we seem to count inseparable 
 ideas. Tears are sacred to womanhood and tender- 
 ness consecrate to passion or to home. The world 
 would have laughed in pity or derision if it could have 
 marked the sadness of those last days and the choking 
 awkwardness of the final leave-taking. For a week 
 Qur old friend, who had been a companion in a past of 
 which we had found so much to say, as well as guide 
 and helper in our daily expeditions, had exhausted all 
 his simple strategy to induce us to prolong our pleasant 
 holiday. To have heard him picture the delights of 
 that favored region when island and main are clad in 
 
 ^48 
 
THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 249 
 
 the many-hued garments of autumn ; when '' the soft, 
 serene, September days " cover the slumberous waters 
 with silver sheen ; when the frosty nights have gilded 
 the hickory leaves, painted brown the oaken back- 
 ground, and touched with flame the maple crests; 
 Avhen balmy days and honey-dews have ripened the 
 nectar-laden clusters, and the vine-leaves, whose 
 silver sides the summer breezes delighted to 
 toss up to the sunlight have grown dull and dark 
 — to have heard him discourse of these things in his 
 anxiety to defer our flitting, one would have thought 
 the world had missed a poet in this harsh- voiced 
 weather-beaten fisherman. "When he found these efforts 
 were in vain he counted mournfully the days, and 
 finally the hours, that must elapse before our departure. 
 To the last moment he was assiduous in his care. The 
 fishing rigs, wrapped and packed with the utmost 
 nicety, will bring him to mind whenever we have need 
 for them again. For the last day or two, he hardly 
 left us, even to sleep. 
 
 "I don't know why it is," he said pathetically, as 
 he was putting things in order for the journey the 
 evening before we were to leave, "but I've been out so 
 often with ye, one a sett in' in the bow and t'other in 
 the starn, a takin' off a fish sometimes for one an' then 
 again for t'other, and a listenin' while ye talked, that it 
 don't seem as if I'd ever want to touch an oar again 
 after you're gone. Of course, I didn't always know so 
 very much about what you was talkin' of, and I don't 
 mind tellin' ye that I've learned a sight about many 
 and many things sence I've been a rowing you around 5 
 
250 THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 
 
 but it don't really make no difference, I s'pose, whether 
 an old chap like me learns anything new or not. That 
 is, it don't make no special difference to others, and 
 you probably wouldn't know jest what it is to me. In 
 fact, I don't know as I have exactly learned so much 
 after all. The truth, is Mr. Nathan (he has always 
 called me Mr. Nathan from having heard Pascal Raines 
 address me so frequently as Ben Nathan), that you and 
 Mr. Raines seem to be so far apart, good friends as you 
 always are, that one can't never tell exactly which one 
 to take sides with, till he's thought it all out himself. 
 That's what I shall be doin' all through the fall fishin', 
 an' after the winter sets in, when I shan't have nothin' 
 else to do only jest to tend the fire and mend the rigs 
 for next year's work. When I'm alone I shall always 
 have you with me Mr. Nathan — you and Mr. Raines 
 — coz it don't seem as if you was ever apart — one in 
 the bow and the other in the starn, and I shall ar^ue 
 these things all over to myself, takin' first our side, 
 Mr. Nathan, and then trying to make out Mr. Raines' 
 side, so's to git as nigh the right on't all as I can. 
 
 " It's kind o' queer, but I never had no such sort of 
 feelin' for any parties I ever took out before. It's jest 
 seemed all the time as if I had a share in all the matters 
 you was talkin' about. I used to kind of forget 
 that I wan't nothing nor nobody only jest the ole fish- 
 erman, Rans AVhiting. Sometimes I took your side, and 
 then again I'd have to take Mr. Raines and then 
 I'd think you was both jest about right, an some- 
 times — not often I must allow — it 'ud seem to me 
 that you was both about equally in the wrong. 
 
THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 251 
 
 ''My old woman says I been sort av dazed like, ever 
 sence you come an' took me an' my boat into yer em- 
 ploy ; an' she vows she believes I think more uv you 
 two than uv her an' the children. But I tell her 'taint 
 that. It's jest because the things you've talked about 
 have kind uv lifted me up an' set me to thinkin' about 
 matters that take a holt on a man that he can't shake 
 off in a minit — that is, if he's worth bein' called a man. 
 She says she don't mind which 'tis, but she's sorry 
 you're goin' away, for she declares I hain't never been 
 so pleasant 'round the house afore sence we was young 
 married folks. I s'pose the truth is that it's been more 
 interestin'-like to have me come home and tell over 
 what you and Mr. Raines have been a 'jowerin' about, 
 as he would say, than to jest have me set an' smoke 
 from night-fall till bed-time. An old fellow like me 
 gets kind uv talked out after thirty 3^ears, you know, 
 Mr. Nathan, unless he has something to fill him up 
 now and then. Besides that, our wimmen folks out 
 here in the country, have a pretty dull time. They 
 don't see much of the world, except a neighbor now 
 and ag'in, and about all Sally hears from the outside, 
 is what I chance to bring home at night, which ain't a 
 great deal the generality of times. 
 
 We live down on the Head, you know, which might 
 as well be an island so far as neighbors is concerned, 
 and I expect Sally does get pretty lonesome, especially 
 now the chileren have gone for themselves, all except 
 one, an' she might as well be, for she's off to school the 
 biggest part of the year. I tell ye, Mr. I^athan, wimmen 
 has a hard time anyway ; that is the common run of 
 
252 THE vetp:ran and his pipe. 
 
 wimmen, that can't go to, waterin' places and the like, 
 but jest have to stay at home an' see an' do the same 
 things over and again, day after day. They are a deal 
 worse off than men, an' I don't know as they have any- 
 thing to make up for it. Leastways, I never wish I was 
 one, only when I lose some of my tackle by puttin' of it 
 in the wrong pocket. Then I do sometimes wish I was 
 a woman so that I wouldn't have btit one pocket to 
 sarch in, ye know." 
 
 I laughed with him at his favorite jest, which we 
 had heard often enough during the summer. He tied 
 the last knot in the cord that bound my rod, and 
 filling his pipe sat down for a last smoke with me 
 before starting on his homeward row across the ]jay. 
 His mind still ran on the subject of which he had 
 spoken at such unusual length, and he continued be- 
 tween the whiffs while he sat awkwardly enough in 
 the great willow rocker, which was Pascal Kaines' 
 favorite chair, holding his weather-beaten tarpaulin 
 bottom upward on his knees : 
 
 " I want ter tell ye, Mr. Nathan, that it's done me a 
 world of good to know Mr. Eaines, too. Some way I 
 don't feel quite so free to tell him on't as I do to speak 
 to you. He ain't exactly one of our folks, you know, 
 or perhaps we ain't his folks, which is the way he puts 
 it.. I guess he's purty nigh right about that matter, too. 
 I hate to think so jest the worst kind, for if I ain't 
 nothing but a common fisherman, I can't help having 
 a good deal of pride in the country, and your talk to- 
 gether, while we've been out on the lake, day after day, 
 has give me a good deal of consarn about it, too, I 
 
THE VETEEAN AND HIS PIPE. 253 
 
 don't lay claim to any great learning, and, of course, 
 don't count much one way nor another, but somehow or 
 other I can't help thinking about such things, more es- 
 pecially when I hear others that knows more and thinks 
 better than I can, arguin' about them an' expound! n' of 
 them. 
 
 " Just atween us two, Mr. Nathan, I don't think I'm 
 ever quitfe so good a man at home or abroad as wdien I 
 quit thinkin'- about my own little 'matters all the time, 
 an' tries to make up my own opinion about things that 
 take in the whole country, an' them that's goin' to 
 make the country when we're dead and gone. It makes 
 me feel that I'm of a little more account to think that 
 if I am nothing but jest Rans Whiting, the boatman, 
 I've got a right an' that it's my duty, too, to detarmine 
 what's right an' what's wrong — what's good an' what's 
 bad — for the whole county, an' for every man in it. I 
 sometimes think I know something how a king must 
 feel, for if I hain't got but one say in fifty millions, 
 more or less, I've got that, an' I don't know but it's 
 about as important in the long run that it should be 
 right as if it was the only one there was. 
 
 " There ain't no dodging the fact that 'tain't safe 
 for the country to have any of us git wrong, or at least 
 not try to git right, on these things. And the more Ave 
 try to get right in such things the better we are our- 
 selves. There ain't no doubt of that, even if we make 
 a mistake. I s'spose it's the nateral effect of forgettin' 
 ourselves and rememberin' others ; or perhaps it may 
 be that thinkin' about great things kind uv widens out 
 even the narrest sort of mind. That's the way 'twas 
 
254 THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 
 
 in the war, I know. There was plenty of men, jest 
 hke me, that was the commonest sort of chaps at home, 
 that just as soon as they felt that part of the weight of 
 the country was res tin' on their shoulders, begun to 
 straighten up an' loolv square to the front with their 
 teeth set, not carin' the flip of a penny what became 
 of them, so long as the country was safe an' slavery 
 clean wiped off the sile. I never heard nobody git 
 nigher the truth about that sort of thing than some 
 of jest that sort of men, that nobody thought had any 
 ideas beyond today's work and tonight's sleep, afore 
 that time. 
 
 '' You see, Mr. Nathan, we got the notion that the 
 war was agoin' to set everything right for all time, and 
 it was a mighty poor sort of a man that didn't want 
 to do his part of such a job. A good many of us thought 
 that was about all we could do, and we hadn't no idea 
 that after it was over we'd ever be called on to do any- 
 thing more. In fact, we hadn't any idea there would 
 ever be anything more to do. I guess that was our 
 mistake, but it was a nateral one, an' I must say I hated 
 to give it up and own that 'twas a mistake. But I 
 guess I'll have to. I don't like to think thai Mr. Raines 
 is right, but I can't just see where he's wrong. It does 
 appear as if the war hadn't exactly settled everything, 
 after all. 
 
 " I don't know-notliin' about these matters of tariff 
 an' the like, an' I dont quite understand about the new- 
 fangled doctrine they call civil service reform. Some- 
 times it looks like a good thing, an' then again I feel 
 half afraid there's more in the meal than I can exactlv 
 
THE VETEEAN AND HIS PIPE. 256 
 
 make out. These things are too deep for me. I own 
 up to that. I don't understand them an' never shall. 
 But I b'lieve I do know what's fair an' right 'twixt man 
 and man, in fact as well as in name. That's what I fit 
 for^ Mr. I^athan. I don't say it to boast, but it's a fact. 
 Now I can see, as Mr. Eaines says, that we've forgot 
 that there's a difference between these two peoples 
 about what is right and what is freedom. The South- 
 erners don't look at it as we do, and don't understand 
 it as we do. Come to think of it, I don't see how they 
 could. So far as these things go 1 can see that we are, 
 as he says, two peoples, and I can't exactly see how 
 we're ever to be made one. We may hang together 
 like two families in one house, but I can't see what's to 
 bring us an}^ nigher one another in our opinions about 
 what I can see now was the real cause of the difference." 
 " You see, Mr. ISTathan, they've got the niggers right 
 there with 'em — side'n side, so to speak. I'm sorry for 
 it, I declare I am. I hain't got no ill will agin the 
 poor things. I'm as fur from that as anybody. I want 
 them to have all the rights I've got or ever expect to 
 have, and be just as free to exercise 'em, too. They've 
 earned it, God knows. When I think of the millions 
 and millions of days' work they've done for the coun- 
 try, for of course every lick they struck in the old 
 slave times was for the country's advantage, and how 
 peaceable and well disposed they've been when they 
 might have killed and burned and made the South a 
 wilderness, and no one could have blamed 'em much — 
 I say when I think of these things I don't understand 
 why anyone should object to their having just as good 
 
256 THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 
 
 a show as the rest of us. Then, too, there ain't no glt- 
 tin' out of it that they did help us amazingly in our 
 fight with the Confederacy. Honestly, I don't see how 
 we'd ever have got through with that job without their 
 help. 'Twasn't so much the fighting they did, though 
 that wasn't any small matter, but t'was the information 
 they gave, the roads they showed, the trenches they dug, 
 and the lives they saved. Of course, we can't have one 
 sort of liberty for the white man and another for the 
 black. I fought to put them on the same level, and 
 whatever puts any difference between them puts a slur 
 on them that stood by us in the war. 
 
 " That's the way /feel, Mr. Kathan, and 1 think it's 
 just as much agin the liberty we fought for, to beat 
 them out of this right as it was to put them up on the 
 block and sell them. It's just as much worth fighting 
 about, too, for what is a man's right good for if he 
 ain't at liberty to make use on't, just the same as his 
 neighbors ? It ain't no liberty without that. Besides, 
 it's hurting me and enslaving me, so to speak, right 
 here at home. Suppose all them five or six millions 
 are shut out from the polls, or scared out, or counted 
 out. What is the consequence ? Then every Southern 
 white man's vote is made just so much more powerful 
 than mine. In that case I may do my share of the 
 government just right, and my boy, that's just turned 
 of twenty-one father day, he may do his part in the 
 same way, and one white man down in South Carolina 
 may just step up and kill both our votes. That aint fair, 
 leaving the niggers all out of the question. I'm will- 
 ing to give the men that were rebels just as good 
 
THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 25? 
 
 a show as I have, not flinging their mistake up to 
 them, either. But I aint wilKng to give every white 
 man at ^ -le South two or three times as much power as 
 I have. I may not do very much toward governing 
 the coun ry, but I don't want any man prevented from 
 doin- jest as much as I have a right to do ; and I don't 
 want any man to have a chance to do any more. That's 
 how I feeL 
 
 "At the same time, I wish there were no niggers 
 there. I know they ain't to blame for bein' black, 
 but I certainly do wish they were not. I wish they 
 was all white — that's what I wish. Then it wouldn't 
 take but a little while to rub off the mark of bondage. 
 I begin to see, as Mr. Raines showed us, that after all 
 the saving of the Union wasn't the biggest share of our 
 work. But I would be willing to give up my share in 
 glory of that struggle if we could only get over this 
 difficulty. We freed the slave, but we only half en- 
 franchised the freed man. We gave liimthe ballot, but 
 we failed to give him a place to put it where it would 
 do him any good or have any effect on the government 
 of the country. I s'pose it's natural that the southern 
 man should think it not much harm, or perhaps not 
 any at all, to take away the negro's right in order 
 to secure his own dominion. I wouldn't mind that 
 if he was likely to change his notions. One can't 
 be expected to fit himself to new things all at once, 
 but as far as I can see there ain't no prospect of its being 
 any different. I used to think it only needed a little 
 time, but twenty years don't seem to have made them 
 any more willing to admit the colored man's right than 
 17 
 
258 THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 
 
 they were at first. I don't see what we are goin' to do 
 about it, and yet I know that if something isn't done, 
 there's bound to be a deal of trouble over it sooner or 
 later. AYhat do you suppose will come out of it all, 
 Mr. Nathan." 
 
 " I'll tell you what will come of it, Ransom," said 
 Pascal Eaines, who had come sauntering along the 
 hall and into my room, the door of which was open, in 
 time to hear the closing remarks of our old friend. 
 Perhaps he had heard more, for Ran's tones were not 
 such as w^alls or distance could smother. " I will tell 
 you what will come of it," he repeated, as he came and 
 laid his hand upon the shoulder of the old man, " either 
 the Republic must find a remedy for this debasement 
 of the freeman's right or the Republic must die in order 
 that the freeman may achieve his right." 
 
 " Oh, I hope not — I hope not so bad as that, Mr, 
 Raines," said the old man as he rose, and taking his 
 red bandanna from the crown of his tarpaulin, wiped 
 the sweat-drops from his troubled face. " You don't 
 think that ?" he asked appealingly. 
 
 "It was such men as you, Mr. Whiting," answered 
 Raines, " who taught the world that the right, even of 
 the slave, was of more importance than a Nation's 
 peace. Why should not the freeman's prerogative be 
 of more importance than a nation's existence ?" 
 
 "I — don't — know," answered the old man, while 
 the troubled look grew deeper on his scarred ctnd 
 rugged face. 
 
 Then he took his leave, his lip quivering and his 
 voice softening as he bade us good-bye. We watched 
 
 I 
 
THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 259 
 
 him from the window as he rowed across the moon-ht 
 bay toward his home upon the Head. When the flash 
 of his oars could no longer be seen, Pascal Eaines 
 turned away and said in a more cheerful tone than it 
 had been his wont to use of late : 
 
 " You and I may speculate, Ben Nathan, with very 
 little result, but when such men as he begin to think, 
 there is hope that something will be done. It is the 
 peculiarity of our system, perhaps I might almost say 
 the distinctive feature of our civilization, that the in- 
 stinct of the masses is truer than the wisdom of the states- 
 man. It is only when the people cease to recognize the 
 fact that the responsibility for good government rests 
 with them, that danger threatens the Republic. I do 
 not see how the great problem is to be solved, but it is 
 perhaps well that the freedman's right is so closely 
 linked with the liberator's privilege. The Northern 
 patriot could no doubt summon fortitude to endure the 
 sight of the colored man's misfortunes for a long time, 
 were it not that his own individual right to rule is 
 thereby perceptibly abated and depreciated. You 
 know it was really the fear of slavery's aggressions that 
 stirred up this wonderful Northern conscience of yours 
 to effect its eradication. When once aroused it was a 
 flame of fire — I grant you that — but who can tell 
 how long the slave might have languished in bondage 
 without interference or even plausible hope, had not the 
 fear taken possession of men's minds that some time or 
 other the rights of ^Northern freemen might be en- 
 dangered by its existence. 
 
 " Free Kansas " was called a crusade a2:ainst slav- 
 
260 THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 
 
 ery. It was more properly a movement to protect 
 free labor. If we had been content to remain as we 
 were, and had not tried to compel the ISTorth to uphold 
 and protect the institution, I am of the notion, Ben 
 I^athan, that the zeal of your Northern abolitionists 
 would have ended in a war of angry words alone. So, 
 too, if the South, to-day, would voluntarily relinquish 
 the power which it wields by virtue of the suppressed 
 neffro vote, there is no doubt but the North would will- 
 ingly consent to their disfranchisement, and the prob- 
 lem of the negro's future would be left in our hands. 
 I cannot help thinking that, all things considered, this 
 would be the better course for all, but I know it will not 
 be adopted. We will not give up the power that has been 
 given into our hands by a curious accident, and some 
 time or other you will grow restive under the undue ad- 
 vantage thus given to the South. What the outcome 
 will be no man can tell. It is quite within the range 
 of possibility that the Union, which was restored in 
 order that the colored man might receive his liberty, 
 should be again imperilled in order that he may obtain 
 its full fruition." 
 September 11, 1885. 
 
AUTUMlSr REVEEIES. 
 
 We are back at the old homestead on the hillside, 
 Blower. Here our summer wanderings began, and here 
 they must end. We came Avhen flower and leaf and 
 twittering songster told the story of new life or sang the 
 ever welcome song of love. The woefulness of the past 
 faded out of our memory beneath tliese sunny influences 
 and the freshness of youth's heyday came to us once 
 more. It is the dreams of youth after all, Blower, 
 that give manhood strength to battle with adversity. 
 They are the true elixir of life, by Avhich the over- 
 wearied soul is made strong for new duties. Some one 
 has said that " genius is that power which carries the 
 attributes of ^^outh into the domain of age." Yet we 
 are wont to sneer at youth's credulity and inexperience 
 — to laugh at the simple pleasures that delight, and 
 mock at the half-imagined woes that veil with shadows 
 life's young day. Our riper wisdom jeers at sentiment, 
 and boasts of its fancied power to see things as tliey 
 really are. Yet it is sentiment that rules the world 
 and impels men to worthy achievement. It may be 
 the instrument of evil, but whether its results are good 
 or bad it is a weapon of celestial temper. It does the 
 world's work in spite of selfishness and greed. 
 
 Now and then a Yirginius rouses a nation to over- 
 throw a tyrant by the story of his own wrongs, but it 
 
 361 
 
262 THE VPJTERAN AND HIS PIPE. 
 
 is rarely the man who is oppressed that inspires revolt 
 and heads resistance. Soine Moses from the desert of 
 Horeb comes to the Egypt, where men suffer wrong, 
 inspired with holy zeal for their deliverance ; some 
 John Browm dies to show the slave how freemen value 
 liberty. It is the sentiment of justice and humanity, 
 stirred to life by the story of another's w^rongs, that 
 wakens always the highest manhood and accomplishes 
 the most glorious results. Sometimes we call it chiv- 
 alry ; sometimes we name it patriotism ; but when there 
 seems to be no special need for self-sacrifice and devo- 
 tion we laugh at the power that redeemed, and call it 
 — folly! 
 
 Even in our land, wdiere the climacteric miracle of 
 the ages has so recently been wrought, it has been cus- 
 tomary of late to sneer at sentiment in politics and 
 statesmanship. Our wise men tell us that the politi- 
 cians' art is purely monetary ; that he alone is worthy 
 to be termed a statesman who devotes himself to ques- 
 tions of demand and supply — to whose mind human 
 right is bounded by public credit. The Midas touch is 
 preferred to the patriot's . pride, and dollars and cents 
 eclipse all questions of right and wrong. Economy, 
 we are told, is better than glory, and national shame is 
 accounted easy to endure when w^ounded pride is poul- 
 ticed with perceptible profit. It was a hard thing for 
 England to lose that chivalric soldier who perished in 
 Khartoum, abandoned and betrayed by those whom he 
 served. Sentiment would have dictated his relief at 
 any cost and under all circumstances. But a wise and 
 prudent statesmaaship decreed it to be better that he 
 
THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 263 
 
 should perish and the honor of Britain be forever tar- 
 nished by his betrayal, than that the tax on beer should 
 be increased ! 
 
 Nevertheless, sentiment is not dead, and the base 
 and sordid leprosy that boasts the name of practicality, 
 however deep it may have eaten into our life, has not 
 yet destroyed its core. There is still something more 
 potent than greed — more important than econom}^ 
 As Ransom Whiting said, " it is a good thing for a man 
 to think of something beyond his own little matters of 
 daily need." Thrift is well enough in its way, but the 
 patriot heart should direct the tradesman's skill. Polit- 
 ical economy is but an incident of national life — the 
 means by which great national ends are to be achieved. 
 Sentiment perceives these ends, and is inspired to labor 
 and endure for their achievement. The folly that calls 
 itself practicality never looks beyond the means. Sen- 
 timent inspired the soldiers who fought for the libera- 
 tion of the slave. The practical statesmen of that day 
 have not yet ceased to mourn because the country could 
 not be preserved without emancipation. The sentiment- 
 tal view of the situation was that it was better the na- 
 tion should be blotted out, than that slavery should be 
 perpetuated ! The practical view of the matter was, 
 that the nation should seek only to reconquer its terri- 
 tory, restore its sovereignty, and collect its revenues ! 
 Xow that we look back upon it we can see that Pascal 
 Raines was right in declaring that liberty was the 
 great object for which the Federal soldier fought — the 
 liberty of another — and that the preservation of the 
 national domain and the national unity was but an in- 
 
26tl: THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 
 
 cident — a means b}^ which the hberty for which we 
 fought may be perfected and perpetuated. 
 
 One phase of the great work which our nationahty was 
 designed to accomphsh is at an end. One cycle of human 
 right is complete. Has the end of effort and of aspira- 
 tion come ? Has the task assigned to us by that divine 
 allotment which we call destiny, been fully performed ? 
 Ah, me, old friend, I fear it is but half begun. 
 
 When we came here in the early summer, Blower, 
 it was to loiter under the blossommg trees and dream 
 of a dead past and a dead love. Every footstep stirred 
 the mold of tender memories. Every breath was redo- 
 lent with the fragrance of by -gone days. It was a past 
 that wooed me backward, Blower. Its pleasures hid 
 the duties of the present, and made the morrow seem 
 only a dreary waste of hopeless woe. Thei^e was a 
 strange fascination in recalling those long-past hours 
 of bliss, under the fragrant canopy, with the sunlight 
 struggling through its meshes — with birds and bees 
 above and about me, and the soft, springing turf be- 
 neath. Even the evidences of decay that were around 
 consoled my loneliness. There was a bitter sweetness 
 in the fact that the soft grassy mound in the little 
 church-yard beyond the skirt of soughing pines, with 
 only "Alice" on the snowy marble, was mine — the 
 tomb in which love and hope and aspiration all lay 
 buried. Since it was rounded up, the world had been 
 to me only an empty shell, holding no honor that I de- 
 sired, no duty that I regarded as incumbent upon me 
 to perform. 
 
THE VETERAN AND KIS PIPE. 265 
 
 I mourned for remembered joys as if I had been 
 wronged by their departure. The magnitude of m}^ 
 loss induced a sort of self-pity which fitted the balmy 
 season, and suited well my weary mood. Perhaps I 
 have been too much a dreamer, for while no one could fill 
 the void left in my heart, it seems now as if I had 
 wronged the gentle dead by growing no better and 
 worthier — by gathering no harvest of good and noble 
 deeds with which to greet her expectant spirit when 
 we meet on the hither shore of the great unknown, 
 where she is waiting for me. 
 
 It is all changed now, Blower. The trees are bent 
 low with a great burden of ripening fruit. Even the 
 half decayed trunk I likened to myself has its few re- 
 maining branches bowed so that their tips touch the 
 earth, with dull green apples, dashed with red upon the 
 sunny side, that give promise of rich flavor when the 
 snow lies deep about the withered stock. The clover 
 heads are dry and dun, though the aftermath is spring- 
 ing fresh and green. The hedgerow by the old wall is 
 aglow with golden-rod, and dogwood and sumach make 
 its crest a line of flame. Here and there, upon the dis- 
 tant hills, a soft-maple begins to show its gorgeous 
 autum tints, while now and then an early ripening 
 hickory seems to cleave the emerald mass from turf to 
 the horizon with a shaft of golden light. The bees are 
 droning lazily about the ripening fruit, and Arachnis 
 watches lazily the nets she has set during the summer, 
 half heedless of the prey which they ensnare. Every- 
 thing bespeaks ripeness and fruitage. The harvest 
 waits only to be gathered. The results of toil and care 
 
26(y THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 
 
 and patient waiting are ready for the year's ingather- 
 ing. Is the husbandman heedless of his opportunity ? 
 Will he leave the harvest to be wasted by frost and 
 storm ? His voice comes to us on the brisk autumn 
 breeze in answer, as he cheers the patient beasts who 
 draw the loaded wagons toward the open doors of the 
 great barn upon the hillside. He would be a foolish 
 man indeed who would turn away and leave the out- 
 come of his care and toil to molder back to dust 
 ungathered and unused. It is only nations that thus 
 squander the fruits of mighty labors and spurn the 
 harvest watered with the blood of heroes ! 
 
 My memories are not of tender dalliance in the 
 orchard now, old friend. The little grave in the quiet 
 churchyard, covered with evergreen periwinkle, through 
 the clustering leaves of which the calm blue eyes — a 
 second flowering which the favored autumn sometimes 
 brings — look trustfully up into the clear blue sky, 
 draws me irresistibly to its side. I lean upon the white 
 headstone; I recline upon the verdant mound and 
 dream of her who lies beneath, not as one lost, but as 
 one found — a living, ever-loving presence. The story 
 which so long has been too sad for memory to dwell 
 upon, comes back to me now without one thought of 
 pain. A thousand times sweeter than that memory of 
 young love's first sweet whispered words breathed in 
 my ear, beneath the blossoming orchard's fragrant 
 canopy, is now the recollection of that winter deathbed 
 scene. 
 
 It is a simple story. Blower, meaningless no doubt 
 
THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 267 
 
 to stranger hearts. For more than a score of years it 
 has been to me a woeful memory — a sad, inexphcable 
 mystery. By some strange alchemy the autumn scenes 
 have transformed it all at once into a blissful vision. 
 The years have dragged slowly and wearily since that 
 time. I have not been a sluggard, Blower ; that you 
 can testify. But I have yearned always for the end. 
 I have longed to go to my beloved, to lie down beside 
 her in the pleasant country church-yard, and wake to 
 new life with her in the sweet fields of Elysium. And 
 always I have dreamed of those blissful days in the 
 fragrant orchard bower, with the soft spring turf be- 
 neath us and the half translucent billows of white and 
 green above, as the archetype of the hereafter. I have 
 ])ictured it as an endless oJGfering of rapturous tender- 
 ness which awaited my coming, never once thinking 
 what return I might make for the love which all this 
 time has been ripening in the sunshine of the better 
 land. The harvest scenes and ripe autumnal beauty 
 have taught me better. I see now^ that life's sunset 
 brought a truer knowledge of life's duties and responsi- 
 bilities to her eyes, dimmed though they ^\^ere by the 
 fast coming night. 
 
 I can never forget it, Blower, though until this 
 moment I have been unable to speak of it even to you. 
 She was my comrade's only sister — Joe's other self. 
 We had not seen each other since I brought the story 
 of her loss with the news of our victor}^ The disabled 
 but victorious veteran won a more glorious victory 
 while he waited for his wounds to heal, than he had 
 ever shared upon the field of battle, There were a few 
 
268 THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 
 
 short months of paradise. Then came the shock of 
 battle again and with it wounds, disease, and the long, 
 silent night of captivity. My lot was hard. I did not 
 bear it mimurmuringly, but what would it have been 
 if I had known her suffering? In all those weary 
 months it did not once occur to me that she would think 
 me dead. My comrades knew of my wound and I did 
 not doubt that she had heard of my capture. I wrote 
 but once — I had no other opportunity — but was not 
 that enough ? 
 
 "Ah me ! she had been in the grave a year when 
 that poor missive came to her address. What had 
 been its wanderings or where it went astray no man 
 knoweth. After our lines fell back a fire had broken 
 out in the forest where we fought and she was told 
 that I had perished in the flames. The sickening story 
 was told to her with terrible particularity by one who 
 only sought to offer consolation. It was enough. 
 The strain of this great horror was too much for the 
 slender thread of her sweet life. 
 
 The snow was heaped against the clattering panes 
 when my captivity ended. I stood again, the shadow 
 of my former self, within the walls of the old home- 
 stead, by the bedside of my dying love. The winter 
 sun was sinking in the west, where the soft clouds 
 shone warm and bright as with the radiance of an im- 
 mortal day. She knew me — smiled — pressed my 
 hand weakly and whispered : 
 
 " Now I can die, since I know you live — to do a 
 man's work — ^.in the world and — for the world!" 
 
 It seemed cruel that she should thus abjure me to 
 
THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 269 
 
 live when I so longed to die with her. Why should I 
 work in the world or for the world ? What had the 
 world for me to do or win after she had left its con- 
 fines? 
 
 I see it all now^, Blower. She would have me gather 
 a harvest of good works — manly deeds worthy of the 
 hero of her dreams — that I may bring the record 
 of a life inspired by an undying love, when I came to 
 mate with her in the peaceful clime forever. Have I 
 obeyed her injunction, Blower? I have lived and 
 wrought. My hair has grown silvery with time and 
 woe. I have lived in the past and mourned unceasingly 
 for the love it mockingly offered to my lips. While 
 time has swept by without a moment's pause, has the 
 harvest wasted or merely ripened ? Is there yet time 
 to gather the sheaves of Yesterday into the garner for 
 To-morrow's sustenance and delectation ? 
 
 I ask the question reverently. Blower, wondering 
 whether any great work for humanity lies at the thres- 
 hold of To-day. 
 
 September 18, 1885. 
 
 THE END. 
 
^-, 
 
 ^^lr^? 
 
 i/?^