It is eight o’clock in the morning, at Harrisonburg, in the leafy month
of June. You board the train from Staunton. As it rushes down the Valley
there lies spread out before you, on either side, a scene of rare
loveliness. Fertile plains, waving with grain; rolling, grass-clad
hills, laughing in the sunshine, dotted here and there with woods of
singular beauty; limpid streams, brawling over glittering, many-hued
pebbles; a pure air filling the lungs with a glad sense of health and
well-being. There are few such lands.
But come, take this seat on the right-hand side of the car, and I will
tell you of some things which happened twenty years ago.
Ah, there it is! Don’t you see that bluish thread, winding along over
there, skirting that hill? That is the Valley Pike. There was no
railroad there then. Take a good look at it. Take a good look, for
heroes have trodden it.
Ah, the train has stopped. Do you see that grizzled farmer, who has
ridden over to the station to get his mail? I know him, for I never
forget a face. He was there at Manassas when Bee said, “Look at Jackson,
standing like a stone wall!” Yes, many of the survivors of the Stonewall
Brigade live along this road.
That is the Massanutten Mountain, a spur of the Blue Ridge. How
beautiful it is! Straight and smooth and even, with a little notch every
now and then; clothed from base to summit with primeval forests, it
looks, crested as it is here and there with snowy clouds, like a
gigantic green wave rolling across the plain.
A wall not unlike this once stood on either hand in the Red Sea; and
Miriam smote her tambourine in triumph, praising the God of Israel.
As we rush along, the mountain bears us company, as though doing the
honors of the Valley.
The train stops at Strasburg. There, too, Massanutten ends.
As though a Titan had cleft it with his sword, so abruptly does it sink
into the plain.
You are on your way to Alexandria, and will have to wait here four
hours; so let us look about us. Run your eye up that sharp acclivity
lying over against the town.
Upon the brink of that steep, twenty years ago, stood Gordon.
Accompanied by a few staff-officers, he had spent the greater part of
the day in the toilsome ascent, tearing his way through dense, pathless
jungles, struggling among untrodden rocks; and now, on the seventeenth
of October, 1864, he stands there sweeping the plain with his
field-glass. What does he see? Why does he forget, in an instant, his
fatigue? What is it that fires with ardor his martial face?
But before I tell you that, a word with you.
In the South, at the breaking out of the war, there was not to be found
one solitary statesman; nor one throughout the length and breadth of the
North. Not that capacity was lacking to either side. Great capacity is
not required. Chesterfield heard the rumble of the coming French
revolution, to which the ears of Burke were deaf. After all, statecraft
is but the application of temporary expedients to temporary emergencies;
and you might carve a score of Gladstones and Disraelis out of the brain
of Herbert Spencer without in the least impairing his cerebrum. Pericles
shone in Athens for an hour; Aristotle dominated the world for twenty
centuries. Such is the measure of a statesman; such that of a thinker.
Statesmen, therefore (or the making of such), we had, I must suppose, by
the thousand. I have said they were not to be found.
For years before we came to blows the animosity between North and South
had been deepening, reaching at last this point, that he who would catch
the ear of either side could do so only by fierce denunciation of the
other; he that would have it thought that he loved _us_ had only to show
that he hated _you_. Men of moderation found no hearers. The voices of
the calm and clear-headed sank into silence; and Wigfall and Toombs, and
Sumner and Phillips walked up and down in the land.
Yes, no doubt we had thousands of statesmen who knew better. But who
knew _them_? And so Seward kept piping of peace in ninety days, and
Yancey—Polyphemus of politicians—was willing to drink all the blood
that would be shed. A Yankee wouldn’t fight, said the one. The
slave-drivers, perhaps, would, said the other; but they were, after all,
a mere handful; and the poor white trash would be as flocks of sheep.
A Yankee wouldn’t fight! And why not, pray? Two bulls will, meeting in a
path; two dogs, over a bone. The fishes of the sea fight; the birds of
the air; nay, do not even the little midgets, warmed by the slanting
rays of the summer’s sun, rend one another with infinitesimal tooth and
microscopic nail? All nature is but one vast battle-field; and if the
nations of men seem at times to be at peace, what is that peace but
taking breath for another grapple? And congresses and kings are but
bottle-holders, and time will be called in due season. The Yankees
wouldn’t fight! And suppose they wouldn’t, why should they, pray, being
sensible men?
Where was the Almighty Dollar?
Had any one of the Southern leaders read one page of history, not to
know that money means men? means cannon, rifles, sabres? means ships,
and commissariat, and clothing? means rallying from reverses, and
victory in the end? The Yankee would not fight, they told us. His
omnipotent ally they forgot to mention or to meet. Had our Congress
consisted of bankers, merchants, railway superintendents, they would
have seen to the gathering of the sinews of war. We had only the
statesmen of the period,—God save the mark!
It was in finance that we blundered fatally. ’Twas not the eagle of the
orator that overcame us, but the effigy thereof, in silver and in gold.
When we fired on Fort Sumter there was a burst of patriotism throughout
the North, and her young men flocked to her standards. They fought, and
fought well. The difference between them and us was, that when they got
tired of poor fare and hard knocks they could find others to take their
places. Being sensible, practical men, they used their opportunities.
When a man was drafted (as the war went on) he or his friends found the
means of hiring a substitute (persons who have visited the North since
the war tell me that you rarely find a man of means who served in the
army); and at last cities and counties and States began to meet each
successive call for fresh troops by votes of money; their magnificent
bounty system grew up, and from that time the composition of the
Northern armies rapidly changed. Trained soldiers from every part of the
world flocked to the El Dorado of the West; and as the war went on each
successive battle brought less and less grief to the hearts and homes of
the North, while with us—with us!
From every corner of Europe they poured.
From Italy, from Sweden, from Russia, and from Spain.
From the Danube and the Loire; from the marshy borders of the Elbe and
the sunny slopes of the Guadalquivir.
From the Alps and the Balkan. From the home of the reindeer and the land
of the olive. From Majorca and Minorca, and from the Isles of Greece.
From Berlin and Vienna; from Dublin and from Paris; from the vine-clad
hills of the Adriatic and the frozen shores of the Baltic Sea.
From Skager Rack and Skater Gat, and from Como and Killarney.
From sweet Auburn, loveliest village of the plain, from the banks and
braes o’ bonny Doon, and from Bingen-on-the-Rhine.
Catholic and Calvinist; Teuton, Slav, and Celt,—who was not there to
swell that host, and the babel of tongues around their camp-fires? For
to every hut in Europe, where the pinch of want was known, had gone the
rumor of fabulous bounty and high pay now, generous pension hereafter.
At Bull Run the North met the South; at Appomattox Lee laid down his
sword in the presence of the world in arms.