All the sacred relations of wife, mother,
father and child trampled beneath the brutal feet of might. And all this
was done under our own beautiful banner of the free. The past rises
before us. We hear the roar and shriek of the bursting shell. The broken
fetters fall. These heroes die. We look. Instead of slaves we see men
and women and children. The wand of progress touches the auction-block,
the slave-pen, the whipping-post, and we see homes and firesides and
schoolhouses and books, and where all was want and crime and cruelty and
fear, we see the faces of the free.
These heroes are dead. They died for liberty; they died for us. They are
at rest. They sleep in the land they made free, under the flag they
rendered stainless, under the solemn pines, the sad hemlocks, the
tearful willows, and the embracing vines. They sleep beneath the shadows
of the clouds, careless alike of sunshine or of storm, each in the
windowless palace of rest. Earth may run red with other wars; they are
at peace. In the midst of battle, in the roar of conflict, they found
the serenity of death.
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