Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 17.djvu/165

 Life^ Services and Character of Jefferson Davis. 157

throng upon the memory. The names of Stuart, Ashby, Morgan, Cleburne, and their compeers spring from the full heart to the lip. Would that time permitted me to call that brilliant roll of the living and the dead ; but why need the voice pronounce what all would speak ?

Men judg:e Napoleon by his marshals ; judge Jefferson Davis and his chosen chieftains, and the plea of words seems weak indeed by the side of Men and Deeds.

Troop behind them those armies of " tattered uniforms and bright musket" — but no, it is beyond the reach of either brush or chisel to redeem to the imagination such men, such scenes, as shine in their twenty-two hundred combats and battles. Not until some new-born Homer shall touch the harp can mankind be penetrated by a sense of their heroic deeds, and then alone in the grand majestic minstrelsy of epic song.

WAR.

And now that war is flagrant, far and wide on land and sea and river, over the mountains and the plain, rolls the red battle tide and rises the lofty cheer. The son falls, the old father steps in his place. The father falls, the stripling of the play-ground rushes to the front ; the boy becomes a man. Lead fails — old battle- fields are raked over, children gather up bullets as they would pluck berries, household ornaments and utensils are broken, and all are moulded into missiles of war. Cannon fail — the very church bells whose mellow chimes have summoned to the altar are melted and now resound with the grim detonations of artillery. Clothes fail — old garments are turned over ; rags and exercise are raiment. The battle horse is killed, the ship goes down ; the unhorsed trooper and the unshipped tar trudge along with the infantry. The border States are swept away from the Confederacy ; the remaining ones gird their loins the lighter. Vir- ginia is divided ; there is enough of her left for her heroic heart to beat in. New Orleans is gone ; Vicksburg falls ; Gettysburg is lost ; armies wither ; exiles make their home in battle ; slender battalions do the duty of divisions. Generals die in the thick fight ; captains become generals ; a private is a company. Luxuries disappear ; ne- cessities become luxuries. Fields are wasted ; crops and barns are burned ; flocks and herds are consumed, and naught is left but " man and steel — the soldier and his sword."

The desolate winter lays white and bleak upon the land ; its chill winds are resisted by warm and true affections.