Winchester, Marietta, Woodlawn, Hampton, and Beaufort, by means of
public appropriations and private subscriptions, statues and other
monuments have at different times been erected; and many others
doubtless will be erected in them hereafter. Some of them are in
secluded situations, where for many mites the population is sparse, and
the few people that live near them cherish tenderer recollections of the
"Lost Cause" than of that which finally won. But such of them as are
contiguous to cities are places of interest to more or less of the
neighboring population; and, in some of them, there are commemorative
services upon Memorial Days.
These cemeteries have many features in common; and much that may be said
of one of them may also be said of the others--merely changing the
names.
It happened to the present writer to visit the National Cemetery at
Beaufort, South Carolina, to deliver an oration on Memorial Day, 1881,
in the midst of ten thousand graves of the soldiers and sailors of the
department of the South and South Atlantic blockading squadron. The dead
interred in these thirty acres of graves are: known, 4,748, unknown,
4,493; total, 9,241. Among the trees planted in this cemetery is a
willow, grown from a branch of the historic tree which once overshadowed
the grave of Napoleon at St. Helena.
Generals Thomas W. Sherman and John G. Foster, who commanded that
department, and Admirals Dupont and Dahlgren, who commanded that
squadron, all died in their Northern homes since the peace, and their
graves are not to be looked for here. The same may be said of hundreds
of military and naval officers who performed valuable services on these
shores and along these coasts, and have since "passed over to the great
majority."
That neither General Strong nor General Schimmelfennig is buried here
might be accounted for by the fact that, though they died by reason of
their having served in this department, they died at the North. But even
General Mitchell, whose flag of command was last unfurled in this
department, who died in Beaufort, and was originally buried under the
sycamores of the Episcopal churchyard, now sleeps in the shades of
Greenwood, and not (as he would probably have preferred, could he have
foreseen this cemetery) among the brave men whom he commanded.
The best known names among those here buried (to use a pardonable
Hibernianism) are among the "unknown." For here, as we may believe, in
unknown graves, rest the remains of Colonel Robert G. Shaw, of the
Fifty-fourth Massachusetts (colored), Colonel Haldimand S. Putnam, of
the Seventh New Hampshire, Lieutenant-Colonel James M. Green, of the
Forty-eighth New York, and many other gallant officers and men who were
killed in the assault on Fort Wagner, July 18, 1863, and who were first
buried by the Confederates in the sands of Morris Island.
Many a Northern college is represented here. Among those to whom tablets
have been erected in the Memorial Hall of Harvard University, who are
buried here, besides Colonel Shaw, are Captains Winthrop P. Boynton and
William D. Crane, who were killed at Honey Hill, November 30, 1864; and
Captain Cabot J. Russell, who fell with Shaw at Fort Wagner. Yet these
are but the beginning of the list of the sons of Massachusetts who rest
in this "garden of graves."
Among the many gallant men of the navy buried here is Acting-Master
Charles W. Howard, of the ironclad steam-frigate New Ironsides, whom
Lieutentant Glassell shot during his bold attempt to blow up the New
Ironsides with the torpedo steamer David, October 5, 1863. Another is
Thomas Jackson, coxswain of the Wabash, the _beau ideal_ of an
American sailor, who was killed in the battle of Port Royal, November 7,
1861.
Death, like a true democrat, levels all distinctions. Still, it may be
mentioned that Lieutenant-Colonel William N. Reed, who was mortally
wounded at Olustee while in command of the Thirty-fifth United States
colored troops, February 20, 1864, was, while living, the highest
officer in rank, whose grave is known here. Other gallant officers,
killed at Olustee, are buried near him. Among these, probably, is
Colonel Charles W. Fribley, of the Eighth United States colored troops;
though he may be still sleeping beneath the sighing pines of Olustee.
As far as practicable, all Federal soldiers and sailors buried along the
seaboard of South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida, have been removed to
Beaufort Cemetery; and, as Governor Alexander H. Bullock said: "Wherever
they offered up their lives, amid the thunder of battle, or on the
exhausting march, in victory or in defeat, in hospital or in prison,
officers and privates, soldiers and sailors, patriots all, they fell
like the beauty of Israel on their high places, burying all distinctions
of rank in the august equality of death."
One section of the cemetery is devoted to the Confederates. There are
more than a hundred of these, including several commissioned officers;
and on Memorial Days the same ladies who decorate the graves of the
Federals decorate also in the same manner the graves of the
Confederates; recognizing that, though in life they were arrayed as
mortal enemies, they are now reconciled in "the awful but kindly
brotherhood of death." Sir Walter Scott enjoins:--
"Speak not for those a separate doom,
Whom fate made brothers in the tomb."
And One infinitely greater than Sir Walter has inculcated still loftier
sentiments.
Among the graves to which the attention of the writer was particularly
attracted was that of Charley ----, a boy of Colonel Putnam's regiment,
who had now been dead more years than he had lived. His parents, living
on the shores of Lake Winnipiseogee, and walking daily over the paths
which he had often trod, had plucked the earliest flower of their
northern clime and sent it to the superintendent of the cemetery, to be
planted at Charley's grave. The burning sun of South Carolina had not
spared that flower; but something of it still remained. Its mute
eloquence spoke to the heart of the tender recollections of a father and
of a mother's undying love. How truly does Wordsworth say,--
"The meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears."
For us who have survived the perils of battle and the far more fatal
diseases that wasted our forces, and for all who cherish the memory of
these dead, it will always be a consoling thought that the Federal
government has done so much to provide honorable sepulture for those who
fell in defence of the Union. We can all appreciate Lord Byron's lament
for the great Florentine poet and patriot;--
"Ungrateful Florence! Dante sleeps afar,
Like Scipio, buried by the upbraiding shore."
But we can have no such regret for our lost comrades, buried not upon a
foreign, nor upon an unfriendly shore, but in the bosom of the soil
which their blood redeemed. Sacred is the tear that is shed for the
unreturning brave.
"'T is the tear through many a long day wept,
'T is life's whole path o'ershaded;
'T is the one remembrance, fondly kept,
When all lighter griefs have faded."
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