1865
The victorious armies had marched home and into history. The two days of
review at the end of May was a spectacle not likely to be forgotten by
those who saw it or did not see it. It belonged to that series of events
for which there is no precedence, because there never was before a
continental republic. Like every remarkable occurrence in these
remarkable days of ours, the disbanding of the armies of the East and
West, and their quiet absorption into the mass of the people, is a
spectacle which has another illustration to the extreme practicability
of a popular government. Usually the return of the victorious army is
dreaded by its country somewhat as its advance is by the enemy, and
government provides other wars to employ it. But our men are citizens
who have been defending their own rights. It is their own government
they have been maintaining. The endeavor to represent the government as
a power different from the people and dangerous to their liberty has
failed several times during the war, and will always fail so long as the
broadest base of the government is jealously guarded. And nothing is
more honorable to human nature, nothing so truly vindicates the wisdom
of our institutions and the faith that supports them, than that during
the Civil War, of which the event seemed sometimes doubtful, there has
not been even the suspicion of a desire upon the part of any popular
general to seize power and dictate to the authorities. Indeed, in the
only instance in which such a whisper was breathed the suggestion was
known to come from the politicians who surrounded the general, and not
from himself.
The review was, according to all reports, a noble sight. The Army of the
Potomac, which, often baffled, at last struck the crowning blow of the
war, and the Army of the West, whose history is immortal, poured through
the capital amid the shouts and exultation of thousands of spectators,
and marched, with the inspiring clash and peal of martial music, before
the President, the Lieutenant-General, and the notable civilians all the
day. The Western Army had with them the spoils of war: large red
roosters and fighting-cocks, tied on to the backs of mules; cows,
donkeys, and goats came also. The army moved as though Washington were
but a village upon the road of its march through Georgia or the
Carolinas. The critical spectators thought they observed the Western men
were of a finer physique and more entirely American, and the Eastern of
a stricter military drill. The slouched hat was worn by the officers and
men of the West, the French kepi by the more showy Eastern officers.
Sherman himself, the hero of the magnificent campaign which the Richmond
papers said was merely the flight of an arrow through the air--but which
literally pierced the rebellion to the heart--was saluted by the
grandest acclamations. History will rank him with the really great
soldiers. His men are very proud of him--how could they help it?--and if
for a moment there was wonder at his arrangements with Johnson, there is
no man now so poor as to doubt his sincerity or question his patriotism.
It would have been pleasant if, with the other heroes, the eager, proud
crowd could have seen General Thomas, the soldier who, by indomitable
tenacity, saved the day at Chickamauga and destroyed the rebel army
before Nashville; but he was on duty elsewhere.
As the armies passed it must have been impossible to forget--as in
reading of the spectacle we constantly remember--the disbanding of the
army of the Revolution. The soldiers at the review are only a part of
the men now in arms, yet they were about two hundred thousand. Since the
war began there have been many more than a million in the armies. During
the Revolution (as we learn from Professor G. W. Greene's very
interesting volume on the Revolution), there were altogether in the
service 239,791 regulars in the Continental army and 56,163 of the
militia, and the sufferings of that early army are not to be described.
"During the first winter soldiers thought it hard that they should have
nothing to cook their food with; but they found, before the close, that
it was harder still to have nothing to cook." Few Americans have ever
known what it was to suffer for want of clothing; but thousands, as the
war went on, saw their garments falling by piecemeal from around them,
till scarce a shred remained to cover their nakedness. They made long
marches without shoes, staining the frozen ground with the blood from
their feet. They fought battles with guns which were hardly safe to bear
half a charge of powder. They fought, or marched, or worked at the
intrenchments all day, and laid them down at night with but one blanket
to three men.
Mr. Greene tells us that the condition of the officers was hardly better
than that of the men. They, too, had suffered cold and hunger; they,
too, had been compelled to do duty without sufficient clothing, to march
and watch and fight without sufficient food. We are told of a dinner
where no officer was admitted who had a whole pair of pantaloons, and of
all who were invited there was not one who did not establish his claims
for admission.
The treatment of the army of the Revolution by the Continental Congress
was unworthy the fame of that body which Lord Chatham so loftily praised
to Dr. Franklin. The army was disbanded stealthily, "as if the nation
were afraid to look their deliverers in the face; all through the summer
of 1783 furloughs were granted freely, and the ranks gradually thinned.
Then on the 18th of October a final proclamation was issued for their
discharge. On the 2d of November Washington issued his final orders from
Rocky Hill, near Princeton. On the 3d they were disbanded. There was no
formal leave-taking. Each regiment, each company, went when it chose.
Men who had stood side by side in battle, who had shared the same tent
in summer, the same hut in winter, parted, never to meet again. Some
still had homes, and, therefore, definite hopes. But hundreds knew not
whither to go.... For a few days taverns and streets were crowded. For
weeks soldiers were to be seen on every road, or lingering bewildered
about public places, like men who were at a loss to know what to do with
themselves. There were no ovations for them as they came back, toilworn
before their time, to the places that had once known them; no ringing of
bells; no eager opening of hospitable doors. The country was tired of
the war, tired of the sound of the drum and fife; anxious to get back to
sowing and reaping, to buying and selling, and town meetings, and
general elections."
These were the veterans of one of the most glorious and important wars
in the progress of the race. Yet the men who were so unhandsomely
suffered to depart from the service were also grudgingly paid when they
were released. "Their claims were disputed inch by inch. Money which
should have been given cheerfully as a righteous debt was doled out with
a reluctant hand as a degrading charity."
It is refreshing to turn from the page of this melancholy historian to
the newspaper of to-day, and read that the men who have received the
jubilant ovation of the review are not only to be paid in full and at
once, as the most sacred of national debts, but that the most strenuous
effort will be made to employ them by preference in the public offices
to which they may be fitted, while private persons will bear in mind the
same just and generous purpose. Indeed, there is no forgetfulness of the
soldiers of to-day. The sense of their vital service to the country is
universal and commanding. They will be honored heroes while they live,
and our children shall be proud that we cherish them.
It is not easy even yet, although the victors have returned and are
disbanded, fully to comprehend that the war is over and the country
saved. But it is so, and the living and the dead are joined in a
glorious remembrance. How many an eye must have grown dim, swimming in
tears as it gazed on the splendid pageant because of the brave and
beautiful who had shared the peril and the long, long doubt and
struggle, but not the triumph of victory and return. The victory is won;
the country is saved; but at what inestimable cost! Four years ago
Theodore Winthrop fell at Great Bethel, on a summer morning, and those
that loved him learned that the war had begun. Three years ago, on a
winter evening, Joseph Curtis sank dead from his horse at
Fredericksburg, and Theodore Parkman perished at Princeton on an autumn
day. Two years ago, on a soft midsummer night, Robert Shaw fell upon the
ramparts of Wagner, and was "buried with his niggers." Eight months ago,
in the Shenandoah Valley, Charles Lowell died at Cedar Creek, in the
very shock of victory. They were five only, all young, and they gave
gladly for us all that makes life glad and beautiful. Yet how many as
young and brave and beloved as they have died like them, and, like
them, are remembered and mourned! They, too, let us believe, smile
still above us, and bend over us with serene joy at this happy time. Let
their sweet memory hallow our jubilee! Let us take care that our lives
are worthy their glorious death.