Complete Prose Works
UNIONISM, in its truest and amplest sense, form'd the hard-pan of his
character. These he seal'd with his life. The tragic splendor of his
death, purging, illuminating all, throws round his form, his head, an
aureole that will remain and will grow brighter through time, while
history lives, and love of country lasts. By many has this Union been
help'd; but if one name, one man, must be pick'd out, he, most of all,
is the conservator of it, to the future. He was assassinated--but the
Union is not assassinated--_ça ira_! One falls and another falls. The
soldier drops, sinks like a wave--but the ranks of the ocean
eternally press on. Death does its work, obliterates a hundred, a
thousand--President, general, captain, private,--but the Nation is
immortal.
SHERMAN'S ARMY'S JUBILATION--ITS SUDDEN STOPPAGE
When Sherman's armies, (long after they left Atlanta,) were marching
through Southand North Carolina--after leaving Savannah, the news of
Lee's capitulation having been receiv'd--the men never mov'd a mile
without from some part of the line sending up continued, inspiriting
shouts. At intervals all day long sounded out the wild music of those
peculiar army cries. They would be commenc'd by one regiment or brigade,
immediately taken up by others, and at length whole corps and armies
would join in these wild triumphant choruses. It was one of the
characteristic expressions of the western troops, and became a habit,
serving as a relief and outlet to the men--a vent for their feelings of
victory, returning peace, &c. Morning, noon, and afternoon, spontaneous,
for occasion or without occasion, these huge, strange cries, differing
from any other, echoing through the open air for many a mile, expressing
youth, joy, wildness, irrepressible strength, and the ideas of advance
and conquest, sounded along the swamps and uplands of the South,
floating to the skies. ("There never were men that kept in better
spirits in danger or defeat--what then could they do in victory?"--said
one of the 15th corps to me, afterwards.) This exuberance continued till
the armies arrived at Raleigh. There the news of the President's murder
was receiv'd. Then no more shouts or yells, for a week. All the marching
was comparatively muffled. It was very significant--hardly a loud word
or laugh in many of the regiments. A hush and silence pervaded all.
NO GOOD PORTRAIT OF LINCOLN
Probably the reader has seen physiognomies (often old farmers,
sea-captains, and such) that, behind their homeliness, or even ugliness,
held superior points so subtle, yet so palpable, making the real life
of their faces almost as impossible to depict as a wild perfume or
fruit-taste, or a passionate tone of the living voice--and such was
Lincoln's face, the peculiar color, the lines of it, the eyes, mouth,
expression. Of technical beauty it had nothing--but to the eye of a
great artist it furnished a rare study, a feast and fascination. The
current portraits are all failures--most of them caricatures.
RELEAS'D UNION PRISONERS FROM SOUTH
The releas'd prisoners of war are now coming up from the southern
prisons. I have seen a number of them. The sight is worse than any sight
of battle-fields, or any collection of wounded, even the bloodiest.
There was, (as a sample,) one large boat load, of several hundreds,
brought about the 25th, to Annapolis; and out of the whole number only
three individuals were able to walk from the boat. The rest were carried
ashore and laid down in one place or another. Can those be _men_--those
little livid brown, ash-streak'd, monkey-looking dwarfs?--are they
really not mummied, dwindled corpses? They lay there, most of them,
quite still, but with a horrible look in their eyes and skinny lips
(often with not enough flesh on the lips to cover their teeth.) Probably
no more appalling sight was ever seen on this earth. (There are deeds,
crimes, that may be forgiven; but this is not among them. It steeps its
perpetrators in blackest, escapeless, endless damnation. Over 50,000
have been compell' d to die the death of starvation--reader, did
you ever try to realize what _starvation_ actually is?--in those
prisons--and in a land of plenty.) An indescribable meanness, tyranny,
aggravating course of insults, almost incredible--was evidently the rule
of treatment through all the southern military prisons. The dead there
are not to be pitied as much as some of the living that come from
there--if they can be call' d living--many of them are mentally
imbecile, and will never recuperate.[8]
Note:
[8] _From a review of_ "ANDERSONVILLE, A STORY OF SOUTHERN MILTTARY
PRISONS," _published serially in the Toledo "Blade" in 1879, and
afterwards in book form_.
"There is a deep fascination in the subject of Andersonville--for that
Golgotha, in which lie the whitening bones of 13,000 gallant young
men, represents the dearest and costliest sacrifice of the war for the
preservation of our national unity. It is a type, too, of its class. Its
more than hundred hecatombs of dead represent several times that number
of their brethren, for whom the prison gates of Belle Isle, Danville,
Salisbury, Florence, Columbia, and Cahaba open'd only in eternity. There
are few families in the North who have not at least one dear relative or
friend among these 60,000 whose sad fortune it was to end their service
for the Union by lying down and dying for it in a southern prison pen.
The manner of their death, the horrors that cluster'd thickly around
every moment of their existence, the loyal, unfaltering steadfastness
with which they endured all that fate had brought them, has never been
adequately told. It was not with them as with their comrades in the
field, whose every act was perform'd in the presence of those whose duty
it was to observe such matters and report them to the world. Hidden from
the view of their friends in the north by the impenetrable veil
which the military operations of the rebels drew around the so-called
confederacy, the people knew next to nothing of their career or their
sufferings. Thousands died there less heeded even than the hundreds
who perish'd on the battlefield. Grant did not lose as many men kill'd
outright, in the terrible campaign from the Wilderness to the James
river--43 days of desperate fighting--as died in July and August at
Andersonville. Nearly twice as many died in that prison as fell from the
day that Grant cross'd the Rapidan, till he settled down in the trenches
before Petersburg. More than four times as many Union dead lie under
the solemn soughing pines about that forlorn little village in southern
Georgia, than mark the course of Sherman from Chattanooga to Atlanta.
The nation stands aghast at the expenditure of life which attended the
two bloody campaigns of 1864, which virtually crush'd the confederacy,
but no one remembers that more Union soldiers died in the rear of the
rebel lines than were kill'd in the front of them. The great military
events which stamp'd out the rebellion drew attention away from the sad
drama which starvation and disease play'd in those gloomy pens in the
far recesses of sombre southern forests."
_From a letter of "Johnny Bouquet," in N. Y. "Tribune," March 27, '81._
"I visited at Salisbury, N. C., the prison pen or the site of it, from
which nearly 11,000 victims of southern politicians were buried, being
confined in a pen without shelter, exposed to all the elements could do,
to all the disease herding animals together could create, and to all
the starvation and cruelty an incompetent and intense caitiff government
could accomplish. From the conversation and almost from the recollection
of the northern people this place has dropp' d, but not so in the gossip
of the Salisbury people, nearly all of whom say that the half was
never told; that such was the nature of habitual outrage here that when
Federal prisoners escaped the townspeople harbor'd them in their barns,
afraid the vengeance of God would fall on them, to deliver even their
enemies back to such cruelty. Said one old man at the Boyden House, who
join'd in the conversation one evening: 'There were often men buried out
of that prison pen still alive. I have the testimony of a surgeon that
he had seen them pull'd out of the dead cart with their eyes open and
taking notice, but too weak to lift a finger. There was not the least
excuse for such treatment, as the confederate government had seized
every sawmill in the region, and could just as well have put up shelter
for these prisoners as not, wood being plentiful here. It will be hard
to make any honest man in Salisbury say that there was the slightest
necessity for those prisoners having to live in old tents, caves
and holes half-full of water. Representations were made to the Davis
government against the officers in charge of it, but no attention
was paid to them. Promotion was the punishment for cruelty there. The
inmates were skeletons. Hell could have no terrors for any man who died
there, except the inhuman keepers.'"
DEATH OF A PENNSYLVANIA SOLDIER
_Frank H. Irwin, company E, 93rd Pennsylvania--died May 1, '65--My
letter to his mother_--Dear madam: No doubt you and Frank's friends have
heard the sad fact of his death in hospital here, through his uncle,
or the lady from Baltimore, who took his things. (I have not seen them,
only heard of them visiting Frank.) I will write you a few lines--as
a casual friend that sat by his death-bed. Your son, corporal Frank H.
Irwin, was wounded near fort Fisher, Virginia, March 25th, 1865--the
wound was in the left knee, pretty bad. He was sent up to Washington,
was receiv'd in ward C, Armory-square hospital, March 28th--the wound
became worse, and on the 4th of April the leg was amputated a little
above the knee--the operation was perform' d by Dr. Bliss, one of the
best surgeons in the army--he did the whole operation himself--there was
a good deal of bad matter gather'd--the bullet was found in the knee.
For a couple of weeks afterwards he was doing pretty well. I visited
and sat by him frequently, as he was fond of having me. The last ten or
twelve days of April I saw that his case was critical. He previously had
some fever, with cold spells. The last week in April he was much of
the time flighty--but always mild and gentle. He died first of May. The
actual cause of death was pyaemia, (the absorption of the matter in the
system instead of its discharge.) Frank, as far as I saw, had everything
requisite in surgical treatment, nursing, &c. He had watches much of the
time. He was so good and well-behaved and affectionate, I myself liked
him very much. I was in the habit of coming in afternoons and sitting by
him, and soothing him, and he liked to have me--liked to put his arm out
and lay his hand on my knee--would keep it so a long while. Toward the
last he was more restless and flighty at night--often fancied himself
with his regiment--by his talk sometimes seem'd as if his feelings
were hurt by being blamed by his officers for something he was entirely
innocent of--said, "I never in my life was thought capable of such a
thing, and never was." At other times he would fancy himself talking as
it seem'd to children or such like, his relatives I suppose, and giving
them good advice; would talk to them a long while. All the time he was
out of his head not one single bad word or idea escaped him. It was
remark'd that many a man's conversation in his senses was not half as
good as Frank's delirium. He seem'd quite willing to die--he had become
very weak and had suffer'd a good deal, and was perfectly resign'd, poor
boy. I do not know his past life, but I feel as if it must have
been good. At any rate what I saw of him here, under the most trying
circumstances, with a painful wound, and among strangers, I can say