And everywhere among these countless graves--everywhere in the many
soldier Cemeteries of the Nation, (there are now, I believe,
over seventy of them)--as at the time in the vast trenches, the
depositories of slain, Northern and Southern, after the great
battles--not only where the scathing trail passed those years, but
radiating since in all the peaceful quarters of the land--we see, and
ages yet may see, on monuments and gravestones, singly or in masses,
to thousands or tens of thousands, the significant word UNKNOWN.
(In some of the cemeteries nearly all the dead are unknown. At
Salisbury, N. C., for instance, the known are only 85, while the
unknown are 12,027, and 11,700 of these are buried in trenches. A
national monument has been put up here, by order of Congress, to mark
the spot--but what visible, material monument can ever fittingly
commemorate that spot?)
THE REAL WAR WILL NEVER GET IN THE BOOKS
And so good-bye to the war. I know not how it may have been, or
may be, to others--to me the main interest I found, (and still, on
recollection, find,) in the rank and file of the armies, both sides,
and in those specimens amid the hospitals, and even the dead on the
field. To me the points illustrating the latent personal character
and eligibilities of these States, in the two or three millions of
American young and middle-aged men, North and South, embodied in those
armies--and especially the one-third or one-fourth of their number,
stricken by wounds or disease at some time in the course of the
contest--were of more significance even than the political interests
involved.
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