Soldiers' record, 1869-06-26

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I>e"voted to the Interests ot the Soldiers and Sailors ot the late "War.
YOL. I. HARTEORD, COOT., SATURDAY, JUNE 26, 1869. NO. 51-
mm a t l o m c .
PEISON HOllRORS.
Beneath the traitor flag defiant flying,
And watchcd by Guards that glory in their sighing,
Ton thousand of our brother braves lie dying.
Men, nobles^but a year ago they came.
From friends who lisped in love their every name
To crush rebellion back through fields of flame.
They earned a kind captivity, but fell
'Mid foes to mcau to treat a foeman well,
Proud of their honor, leagued in hate with hell.
And so our heroes by their craven hand
Stretched like chained heroes on a Southern sand,
Die of slow torments in a christian land.
No shelter know the sufferers—bolder ones.
Daring to seek it, scorched by Georgian suns,
Drop on the dead line 'neath the warden's guns.
No rest! The lazar filth, the charnel ooze,
A horrid couch they cannot shun nor choose.
Beneath receives them where their strength they
lose.
No raiment! bare to shame from hea'i to heel,
(Save rags their captors deemed to poor to steal,)
Their wasted limbs the misty winter feel.
No food, or worse! The carrion vultures' craws,
Would spurn the slimy dole each prisoner draws,
Flung rotten ripe from Hate's hyena claws.
No water! Thick with their own ordure creep
The scanty runs that cross their sloughy keep.
Till their dead bodies dam them heap on heap.
No breath! A myriad mouths that gasp for air,
Shrink at the still putresence reeking shere,
And choke in foulness more than life can bear.
•
Humanity ! There ars no pitying tears,
No feeling hearts, no wholesome goodly .fears.
Where slavery's damning fester grows for years.
Oh, yearning kindred, helpessly afar.
Question the lightning wire, the whistling car,
And weep unanswered at the fates of war.
Unanswered, save to learn the gifts ye sent
To warm and comfort friends in bondage, went
No farther than some thievish jailor's tent.
Yet faint not wholly. Stay your hearts in hope.
For from the womb of death your lost cry uj),
"Father, our sufferings! Bless the bitter cup !"
They shall not cry tinheard, though crushed awhile,
Their voice shall rise to earth's remotest mile.
Telling the deeds of Libby and Belle Isle.
And Danville, Anderson and Macon, made
For torture strong with castle and stockade,
Shall have their bloody work to heaven displayed.
'Till universal man in wrath descrying, •
Spurns forth the fiends, whose spite and lust and lying
Could bind and leave ten thousand brothers dying.
Ten thousand! Aye, if God the dead restore.
From graves already 'ueath the dungeon floor.
Shall start to judgment twenty thousand more
DECOEATION DAY.
Our neio National Holiday— Where did
the Custom Originate %
B O S T O N , June 9th, 1869.
Editor Press: I liad already made a
memorauduiii to send yon a note of
thanks for the very kind and flattering-mention
you made of my connection
with the origin of the new national holi-day,
"Decoration Day," Avhen my atten-tion
was directed to a letter from the
jSTeAv York Commercial Advertiser, in
which the writer undertakes to show
that in your statements you are mistak-en,
not only as to time and place, but
participants and circumstances. I be-lieve
I did originate both the idea and
the entire machinery of the celebration;
but at' the same time I hold that the
humblest soldier who died for the Union
is entitled to inlinitely more honor than
is due to any one whose only direct per-sonal
contribution to the national cause
has been to devise a fitting mode of do-ing
honor to his memory.
As this question of the fact is likely to
be thoroughly discussed, let me tell how
it came about that we inaugurated the
new holiday in the cradle of rebellion.
Col. Woodford fnow Lieutenant Gov-ernor
of New York) appointed me (as a
volunteer aid on his staffj to the position
of superintendent of schools. I had
control of all the schools, common and
adult; and this led to the establishment
of a library, reading-room, home guard,
orphan asylum for colored children, a
national cemetery, and Decoration Day.
One Sunday a party of us fif I rightly
remember, you were one of themj went
out to the race-course to see the grounds
where our brave soldiers, as prisoners of
war, were starved, blistered, and beaten
—exposed, without shelter, to the sultry
heats of day and the deadly dews of
night, by that brutal and merciless rab-ble
whose graves—or the graves of
whose comrades—forsooth ! we are now
taught to regard with as much favor as
the holy mounds of our own martyrs. If
was a sight that fired the blood and
choked the speech of the most i)hlegma-tic
of us. There were their beds still un-disturbed—
the naked sod: each bed with
a little ditch around it to drain oft' the
rain ! A South Carolinian joined us and
went over with us to the place where the
dead were buried. It was in an open
space, near a patch of woods, at a short
distance from the race-course. Long red
trenches told how they had been buried.
But the Carolinian volunteered an ad-ditional
verbal explanation. If seven of
our soldiers were found dead in the morn-ing,
for an example, thev caused a squad
of their comrades to dig a trench—a shal-low
pit seldom more than three feet deep
—and then the rebel guard would throiv
the corpses of our heroes in, place them
side by side, without coffins, and often
stripping them stark naked first! Then
they were covered up, and little rows
were made on the top of the long mound
to show how many corpses lay in the
long grave beneath. At the head of each
row a piece of board was planted with a
number on it—"No. 2," and so on up to
"No. 257." Nothing more on any of
them ! One day twenty-one died, and
were covered up in one trench.
We felt very sad, and the croaking of
the Carolinian, who excused the barbari-ty
Avhen he could^notdeny it, did not tend
to make us less gloomy. There were
marks of the hoofs of cattle on the grave,
and finally he put his foot on one of them.
I think he had a righteous oath launched
at him, which seemed to tell him, for the
first time, that at least there was a North.
We all sat down before we left the
ground, formed ourselves into a society,
and determined to have the sacred soil
fenced in, and, if possible, to raise money
for a monument. General Hatch gave me
permission to tear down the large build-ings
that the rebels had erected for the
purpose of making saltpetre. The next
Sunday I went to Zion's Church and ask-ed
for a dozen colored carpenters and la-borers
to volunteer to erect the fence,
and for a dozen colored women to pre-pare
a large deserted rebel house for an
orphan asylum, and both promptly re-sponded
to the call.
These men organized a society, and
fenced in a large space around the graves
—about an acre, if I remember rightly—
and over the gate-way we placed a large
arch, with the words painted on it '.'•'Mar-tyrs
of the race-course.^^
1 asked the people to dedicate one day
every year to the decoration of these
graves, and fixed the first day of May as
the date of the celebration.
On that day, no colored man in the city
worked ; the whole loyal population turn-ed
out to do honor to our martyrs. There
were three thousand children, from six
thousand to eight thousand people in the
procession. Almost without exception,
every one of them brought a bouquet to
lay on the graves. Every colored clergy-man
took part in the solemn dedication
services. The children marched round
the graves first, and soon covered them
with flowers —not figuratively, but liter-ally
covered them. After the adults had
followed them, not the graves only; but
the spaces between the mounds, were
hidden under these floral tributes. Some
of the graves were covered from a foot to
three feet deep. It Avas the most touch-ing,
solemn, and beautiful ceremony that
I ever saw. And there were few dry
eyes in all that vast multitude of mourn-ers
!
General Hartwell, at my request,
brought out -his brigade of white and col-ored
soldiers, and they marched round
the graves with arms reversed.
All the afternoon was devoted to pat-riotic
speeches and the singing of patriot-ic
songs at the race-course.
Now, here every feature of Decoration
Day was inaugurated.
First It was a holiday.
Second. It was both a civic and military
celebration.
Third. School children and women took
a prominent part in it.
Fourth. It was confined to the decora-tion
of the graves of the soldiers of the
Union.
Fiflh. There were solemn religious ser-vices
at the graves.
Sixth. There were political orations in
connection with it.
Seventh. Here, for the first time, color-ed
orphan children were made partici-pants
in the honors rendered to the de-ceased
representatives of their liberators.
Eighth. Loyal men and loyal women, of
both raccs, were equally active in paying
these tributes.
Ninth. It was announced as the first of
an annual series of celebrations.
Tenth. A society—''The Wardens of
tlie Cemetery"—was organized to perpet-uate
it.
Eleventh. It was a concerted and care-fully-
prepared celebration.
Twelfth. Accounts of the ceremonies
were published far and wide.
It may have been that the spontaneous
gatherings of rebel women or loyal men
had before this time decorated the graves
of the soidiej's in the South. I know I
had never heard of it, and certainly no
such holiday, with all the features of the
Charleston Decoration Day, had or has
ever been recorded in any of the author-ized
or popular annals of the war.
No American, or society of Americans,
can claim the origin of the custom of
thanking God for national blessings. But,
what makes thanksgiving an American in-stitution
is the special mode we have
adopted of celebrating it, for here only in
Christendom it is an annual holiday of
regular occurrence, and uniformly observ-ed
in the same way. So, also, what makes
Decoration Day a national institution is
that special commendation of civil, mili-tary,
religious, and political observances
—that the union of men, women, and
children in procession, and of soldiers in
uniform, and by regimental orgapization
—which, for the first time, as far as the
evidence now stands, was inaugurated at
Charleston, South Carolina, on the first of
May, 18G5. That good custom came out
of our Nazareth. JAMES REDPATH.
H o w ONE BOY WHIPPED ANOTHER.—
"I'll tell you how it was. You see. Bill
and me went down to the wharf to fish ;
and I felt in my pocket and found my
knife and it was gone, and I said, 'Bill,
you stole my knife ; and he said I was
another, and I said go there yourself,-and
he said he was no such thing; and I said
ho was a liar, and I could whip him if I
was bigger'n him ;aDd he said he'd rock
me to sleep, mother ; and I said he was
a bigger one ; and he said I never had
the measles, and I said for him to fork ov-er
that knife or I'd fix him for a tombstone
on Laurel Hill; and he said my grand-mother
was no gentleman ; and I said ho
dersn't take it up ; but he did, you bet;
then I got up again and said he was too
much afraid to do it again, and he tried
to but didn't, and I grabbed him and
threw him down on the top of me like sev-eral
bricks ; and I tell you it beat all—
and so did he ; and my little dog got be-hind
Bill and bit him ; and Bill kicked at
the dog, and the dog ran, and I ran after
the dog to fetch him back, and didn't
catch Turn until I got clear home j and
I'll whip him more yet; is my eye very
black ?"
The farmer whose pigs wore so lean
that it took two of them to make a shad-ow,
has been beaten by another, who had
several so thin that they would crawl out
through the cracks in their pen. He fi-nally
stopped that fun by tying knots in
their tails.
THE GREATNESS OP WOMAN.—The real
influence of a true woman is stronger to-day
than ever, only our standard of true
womanhood is higher. We ask more at
her hands because we realize more fully
her magnificent capabilities. On the
Stage her greatness has long been recog-nized,
but in the world of Art and Music
and Fiction, and the still nobler social
influences which she wields, her laurels
are greener and of fresher growth. For
the first time, too, her intellect is grap-pling
with subjects hitherto denied her.
Into the mysteries of Nature she is tak-ing
her first steps ; Science is showing
her strange wonders; Philosophy is
teaching her the occult forces.and hidden
laws of the world of thought. The dull
monotony of domestic duty rises into the
dignity of intelligent labor as she sees its
deep meaning and far-reaching power.
For the old helplessness comes the rest-ful
consciousness of acknowledged
strength ; and the stifling calm of a life
without high aims is exchanged for the
quick impulses and healthful activities
of ambitious efforts.
FAITH.—An old lady was one night
reading that passage in the Bible which
speaks of the faith that can remove moun-tains.
Now there was behind her humble
dwelling a high hill, which hid the near-est
village from her view. She had often
wibhed that this might be taken away, so
before retiring she prayed that it might
be removed, because she had faith that it
might be done. But in the morning when
she arose she lifted the curtain, and lo !
the mountain was still tli^re. Then the
old lady said to her son, "Just as I ex-pected,
John ; the old hill stands there
yet."
All the militaiy organizations of the
country are invited to participate in the
ceremonies of the dedication of the mon-ument
in the Soldiers' National Ceme-tery
at Gettysburg on the first of July
next, and those intending to be present
a'-e requested to communicate such in-tentions
within a reasonable time, so that
proper arrangements may be made for
them. The call is signed'by David Wells,
chairman.
A lady was examining an applicant for
the office of "maid of all work," when
she interrogated her as lollows: "Well,
Mary, can you scour tin-ware with
alacrity?" "No, ma'am," replied Ma-ry
; "I always scour them with sand.
A little girl was very fond of preach-ing
to her dolls. Her mother heard her
one day reproving one of them for being
so wicked. "Oh! you naughty, sinful
child," said she, shaking her waxen limbs,
"you'll go to the lake of brimstone, and
you won't burn up—you'll just sizzle."
"What is the best attitude for self-de-fence
V said a pupil, putting on the gloves,
to a well known pugilist. ''Keep a civil
tongue in your head," was the significant
reply.
A richly dressed lady stopped a boy
tj'udging along with a basket, and asked :
"My little boy have you got religion?"
"No, ma'am," said the innocent, "I've
got potatoes."
Josh Billings says: "I don't suppose
there is ever killed, on an average, dur-ing
enny one year, more than 16 flees in
the whole ov the United States ov Ameri-ca."
The removal of the scattered bodies of
soldiers, both Union and Confederate,
interred in Ohio, is now being prosecuted
by the Quartermaster's Department.
Most of the remains are to bp interred at
and near Columbus.
Why not call a convention of the au-thors
of "Beautiful Snow," asks the
Chicago Post^io see who is the authorest ?
Take the corn and leave the chaff be-hind.