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Rh wagons, ambulances from whose wheels seemed to sound out the groans of the crushed and the dying that they had carried. These men came from balmy Minnesota, those from Illinois prairies. These were often hummed to sleep by the pines of Oregon, those were New England lumbermen. Those came out of the coal-shafts of Pennsylvania. Side by side, in one great cause, consecrated through fire and storm and darkness, brothers in peril on the way home from Chancellorsville, Kenesaw Mountain, and Fredericksburg, in lines that seemed infinite they passed on.

We gazed and wept and wondered, lifting up our heads to see if the end had come; but no! looking from one end of that long avenue to the other, we saw them yet in solid column, battery front, host beyond host, wheel to wheel, charger to charger, nostril to nostril, coming as it were from under the Capitol. Forward! Forward! Their bayonets caught in the sun, glimmered and flashed and blazed, till they seemed, like one long river of silver, ever and anon changed into a river of fire. No end to the procession, no rest for the eyes. We turned our heads from the scene, unable longer to look. We felt disposed to stop our ears, but still we heard it, marching, marching&mdash;tramp, tramp, tramp! But hush&mdash;uncover every head I Here they pass, the remnant of ten men of a full regiment. Silence! Widowhood and orphanage look on, and wring their hands. But wheel into line; all ye people! North, South, East, West&mdash;all decades, all centuries, all milleniums. Forward, the whole line! Huzza! Huzza!  

There were silent factors in that war&mdash;heroes whose fame it is not the custom to sing&mdash;soldiers outside the ranks who never bore arms and yet bore all the burdens of war, soldiers as much beloved by those in front, and more than the commander-in-chief himself, and whose sympathy and courage and work in the war was a strong support and aid in its successful issue&mdash;I allude to our loyal women. God only knows what they suffered and did it how nobly! When the time of parting came, who can measure the anguish of that last good-by? Who can estimate the courage of the wife who held bravely back the feelings of grief as her trembling lips spoke to her loved companion her last words of cheer, and held aloft the babe to wave farewell&mdash;perhaps eternal, as he turned on the hill-top to take one more look&mdash;perhaps his last.

When the husbands and fathers and brothers were away in danger, down in the camp in wood and swamp and field, she, with a power of body and mind unthought of, raised the crops and cared for the family, laboring under the constant dread lest the next mail that came from the lines would tell of the death of her loved one. Their letters from home, full of tenderness, of love and cheer, nerved the arm and fired the heart to noble deeds. The sister that did the part of brothers, the wife that did the double duty of provider and protector, the &ldquo;girl you left behind you,&rdquo; whose white hands were nightly folded in prayer to the God of Battle for your safety and return, the mother who willingly, yet sadly, gave the boys on whom she looked with pride, — must be counted among our heroes and receive our homage.

I have heard men speak with pride of the Spartan mother who sent forth her son saying,&mdash;&ldquo;Come back with your shield or upon it,&rdquo; and who rejoiced when her son fell in battle; but I point with higher pride to the noble American mother who shed tears as she bade her boy good-bye, and who. all excited and pale, looked over the lists of killed and wounded after each battle and, finding her son&rsquo;s name there, sank despairing to the floor. But womenrsquo;s work was not wholly at home. What soldier will forget the sanitary commission and Christian commission, of which the best eulogy is simply to name. What soldier will forget that the old grandmothers and the girls sat up all night to knit socks, and make shirts and mittens, and send them by carloads down to the boys in blue on Southern battle-fields, with a voiceless prayer and fervent &ldquo;God bless you&rdquo; in every one.

What power can conquer the nation where every man and boy, and every woman and girl will throw themselves between their flag and its enemy! Let the future come with its responsibility and its trial. With such men to fight our battles and build up national strength, and such women to support and build up home and its childhood, who or what can overthrow us, if we but hold to the Union?

