|
Main
- books.jibble.org
My Books
- IRC Hacks
Misc. Articles
- Meaning of Jibble
- M4 Su Doku
- Computer Scrapbooking
- Setting up Java
- Bootable Java
- Cookies in Java
- Dynamic Graphs
- Social Shakespeare
External Links
- Paul Mutton
- Jibble Photo Gallery
- Jibble Forums
- Google Landmarks
- Jibble Shop
- Free Books
- Intershot Ltd
|
books.jibble.org
Previous Page
| Next Page
Page 39
"For them is sorrow's purest sigh,
O'er ocean's heaving bosom sent;
In vain their bones unburied lie,--
All earth becomes their monument.
"A tomb is their's on every page;
An epitaph on every tongue;
The present hours, the future age,
Nor them bewail, to them belong.
"A theme to crowds that knew them not,
Lamented by admiring foes,
Who would not share their glorious lot?
Who would not die the death they chose?"
A similar halo invests our National Cemeteries--which are the most
permanent mementos of our sanguinary Civil War.
Nature labors diligently to cover up her scars. Most of the
battle-fields of the Rebellion now show growths of use and beauty. Many
of the structures of that great conflict have already ceased to be. Some
of them have been swept away by the winds or overgrown with weeds;
others, like Fort Wagner, have been washed away by the waves. But
neither winds nor waves are likely to disturb the monuments or the
cemeteries of our soldiers and sailors. Where they were placed, there
they remain; "and there they will remain forever."
The seventy-eight National Cemeteries distributed over the country
contain the remains of three hundred and eighteen thousand four hundred
and fifty-five men, classed as follows: known, 170,960; unknown,
147,495; total, 318,455. And these are not half of those whose deaths
are attributable to their service in the armies and navies of the United
States and the Confederate States, who are buried in all sections of the
Union and in foreign lands.
In some of these cemeteries, as at Gettysburg, Antietam, City Point,
Winchester, Marietta, Woodlawn, Hampton, and Beaufort, by means of
public appropriations and private subscriptions, statues and other
monuments have at different times been erected; and many others
doubtless will be erected in them hereafter. Some of them are in
secluded situations, where for many mites the population is sparse, and
the few people that live near them cherish tenderer recollections of the
"Lost Cause" than of that which finally won. But such of them as are
contiguous to cities are places of interest to more or less of the
neighboring population; and, in some of them, there are commemorative
services upon Memorial Days.
These cemeteries have many features in common; and much that may be said
of one of them may also be said of the others--merely changing the
names.
It happened to the present writer to visit the National Cemetery at
Beaufort, South Carolina, to deliver an oration on Memorial Day, 1881,
in the midst of ten thousand graves of the soldiers and sailors of the
department of the South and South Atlantic blockading squadron. The dead
interred in these thirty acres of graves are: known, 4,748, unknown,
4,493; total, 9,241. Among the trees planted in this cemetery is a
willow, grown from a branch of the historic tree which once overshadowed
the grave of Napoleon at St. Helena.
Generals Thomas W. Sherman and John G. Foster, who commanded that
department, and Admirals Dupont and Dahlgren, who commanded that
squadron, all died in their Northern homes since the peace, and their
graves are not to be looked for here. The same may be said of hundreds
of military and naval officers who performed valuable services on these
shores and along these coasts, and have since "passed over to the great
majority."
That neither General Strong nor General Schimmelfennig is buried here
might be accounted for by the fact that, though they died by reason of
their having served in this department, they died at the North. But even
General Mitchell, whose flag of command was last unfurled in this
department, who died in Beaufort, and was originally buried under the
sycamores of the Episcopal churchyard, now sleeps in the shades of
Greenwood, and not (as he would probably have preferred, could he have
foreseen this cemetery) among the brave men whom he commanded.
The best known names among those here buried (to use a pardonable
Hibernianism) are among the "unknown." For here, as we may believe, in
unknown graves, rest the remains of Colonel Robert G. Shaw, of the
Fifty-fourth Massachusetts (colored), Colonel Haldimand S. Putnam, of
the Seventh New Hampshire, Lieutenant-Colonel James M. Green, of the
Forty-eighth New York, and many other gallant officers and men who were
killed in the assault on Fort Wagner, July 18, 1863, and who were first
buried by the Confederates in the sands of Morris Island.
Previous Page
| Next Page
|
|