THE HERO OF THE CIVIL WAR1

JOHN D. LONG

(1882)

JOHN DAVIS LONG (1838- ), statesman, was born at Buckfield, Oxford County, Maine. He was educated at Harvard College, and at the Harvard Law School. He was governor of Massachusetts, and served in Congress for three terms. He was Secretary of the Navy in President McKinley's Cabinet. Retiring soon after President McKinley's death, he resumed the practice of law in Boston.

In memory of the dead, in honor of the living, for inspiration to our children, we gather to-day to deck the graves of our patriots with flowers, to pledge commonwealth and town and citizen to fresh recognition of the surviving soldier, and to picture yet again the romance, the reality, the glory, the sacrifice of his service. As if it were but yesterday, you recall him. He had but just turned twenty. The exquisite tint of youthful health was in his cheeks. His pure heart shone from frank, outspeaking eyes. His fair hair clustered from beneath his cap. He had pulled a stout oar in the college race, or walked the most graceful athlete on the village green. He had just entered on the vocation of his life. The doorway of his home at this season of the year was brilliant in the dewy morn with the clambering vine and fragrant flower, as in and out he went, the beloved of mother and sisters, and the ideal of a New England youth:

1 From an oration delivered in 1882, at Tremont Temple, Boston, to veterans of the Civil War.

In face and shoulders like a god he was; 1
For o'er him had the goddess breathed the charm
Of youthful locks, the ruddy glow of youth.
A generous gladness in his eyes; such grace
As carver's hand to ivory gives, or when
Silver or Parian stone in yellow gold

Is set.

And when the drum beat, when the first martyr's blood sprinkled the stones of Baltimore,' he took his place in the ranks and went forward. You remember his ingenuous and glowing letters to his mother, written as if his pen were dipped in his very heart. How novel seemed to him the routine of service, the life of camp and march! How eager the wish to meet the enemy and strike his first blow for the good cause! What pride at the promotion that came and put its chevron on his arm or its strap upon his shoulder.

They took him prisoner. He wasted in Libby, and grew gaunt and haggard with the horror of his sufferings and with pity for the greater horror of the sufferings of his comrades who fainted and died at his side. He tunneled the earth and escaped. Hungry and weak, in terror of recapture, he followed by night the pathway of the railroad. He slept in thickets and sank in swamps. He saw the glitter of horsemen who pursued him. He knew the bloodhound was on his track. He reached the

1 From Virgil's "Eneid," Book I. The passage is descriptive of Æneas.

2 A Massachusetts regiment marching through Baltimore to Washington was set upon by a mob. A street fight ensued, in which the first bloodshed in the war occurred (April 19, 1861).

3 The celebrated Confederate prison.

line; and with his hand grasping at freedom, they caught him and took him back to his captivity.

He was exchanged at last; and you remember, when he came home on a short furlough, how manly and warworn he had grown. But he soon returned to the ranks and to the welcome of his comrades. They recall him now alike with tears and pride. In the riflepits around Petersburg 1 you heard his steady voice and firm command. Some one who saw him then fancied that he seemed that day like one who forefelt the end. But there was no flinching as he charged. He had just turned to give a cheer when the fatal ball struck him. There was a convulsion of the upward hand. His eyes, pleading and loyal, turned their last glance to the flag. His lips parted. He fell dead, and at nightfall lay with his face to the stars. Home they brought him, fairer than Adonis, over whom the goddess of beauty 2 wept. They buried him in the village churchyard under the green turf. Year by year his comrades and his kin, nearer than comrades, scatter his grave with flowers. Do you ask who he was? He was in every regiment and every company. He went out from every village, he sleeps in every burying ground. Recall romance, recite the names of heroes of legend and song, but there is none that is his peer.

1 Petersburg is a city a few miles south of Richmond. It was the center of many operations during 1864 and 1865.

2 Adonis was a beautiful Greek youth with whom Venus, the goddess of beauty, fell in love. He was killed by a wild boar. See manual of mythology.

1

THE FUTURE OF THE UNITED STATES 1

JOSEPH COOK

(1884)

JOSEPH COOK (1838-1901), lecturer, was born at Ticonderoga, New York. He was educated at Yale College, and at the Andover Theological Seminary. The next two years, following his graduation, he spent at Leipsic, Berlin, and Heidelberg, and traveled in Egypt and Palestine. He made a trip around the world, lecturing in all the principal cities of India, Japan, Australia, and the British Isles. Besides his lectures, his writings treated of biology, socialism, labor, and many other subjects.

The Roman eagles, when their wings were strongest, never flew so far as from Plymouth rock to the Golden Gate. The longest straight line that can be drawn inside the limits of the old Roman Empire will not reach from Boston to San Francisco.

Neither Cæsar's empire 3 nor Alexander's 4 had the vast and multiplex physical opportunity possessed by America. Gibraltar and London; Thebes' and the frosty Caucasus were the four corners of imperial

8

5

6

1 From a speech delivered on the Fourth of July, 1884.

2 The harbor of San Francisco.

3 Julius Cæsar, the real founder of the Roman Empire.

4 Alexander the Great of Macedon, the conqueror of Greece, the Persian Empire, Egypt, etc.

5 Gibraltar, the most southerly point of Spain, now a great fortress belonging to Great Britain.

• London, on the Thames, the capital of the British Empire. 'Thebes, one of the capitals of ancient Egypt.

The Caucasus, a range of rugged mountains, which stretches from the Black Sea to the Caspian Sea and forms the southeasterly barrier between Europe and Asia.

Rome, and Alexander ruled from the Adriatic1 to the Indus; 2 but stretch your compass on the globe from London to the Egyptian Thebes, or from Gibraltar to the Caucasian summits, or from the Macedonian Adriatic to the Indus at the foot of the Himalayas, and you have not opened them as far as you must separate them to span the green fields and steepled cities between the surf of the Bay of Fundy3 and the waterfalls of the Yosemite, or to touch, on the one side, the Florida Keys, and on the other, the continuous woods.

5

4

"Where rolls the Oregon, and hears no sound®
Save his own dashings."

On the British Empire the sun never sets. In the short summer nights it never sets on the American republic. San Francisco is the middle city in our territory. It is literally true that in August the sunset has not ceased to flash on the spears of the fisherman in the Aleutian Islands before it begins to glint and blaze on the axes of the woodsmen in the forests of Maine.

Roll up the map of New England! Unroll that of your whole country! How large is Texas? You could bury in it the German Empire, and have room enough

1 Adriatic, a branch of the Mediterranean between Italy and the Balkan Peninsula.

2 Indus, the great river of western India rising in the Himalayas and flowing into the Arabian Sea.

3 The Bay of Fundy, between New Brunswick and Maine on one side and Nova Scotia on the other.

4 A river of California. The country around it now constitutes a national park.

5 The Florida Keys are long, narrow islands of coral formation, off the coast of Florida.

• From Thanatopsis," by William Cullen Bryant.