And there came the nameless dead,-the men Came the dusky martyrs of Pillow's fight, And so all night marched the Nation's dead, With never an arch save the vaulted sky; So all night long swept the strange array; Till a blue cap waved in the lengthening line, MARCHING THROUGH GEORGIA BY H. C. WORK Bring the good old bugle, boys; we'll sing another song, Sing it with a spirit that will start the world along,— Sing it as we used to sing it, fifty thousand strong, While we were marching through Georgia. Chorus. Hurrah, hurrah! we bring the jubilee! Hurrah, hurrah! the flag that makes you free! How the darkies shouted when they heard the joyful sound! How the turkeys gobbled which our commissary found! How the sweet potatoes even started from the ground, While we were marching through Georgia! Cho. Yes, and there were Union men who wept with joyful tears When they saw the honored flag they had not seen for years; Hardly could they be restrained from breaking forth in cheers While we were marching through Georgia! Cho. "Sherman's dashing Yankee boys will never reach the coast!" So the saucy rebels said, and 'twas a handsome boast. Had they not forgot, alas! to reckon on a host, Cho. So we made a thoroughfare for Freedom and her train, Sixty miles in latitude, three hundred to the main; Cho. THE SOUTHERN SOLDIER BY HENRY W. GRADY You of the North have had drawn for you with a master's hand the picture of your returning armies. You have heard how, in the pomp and circumstance of war, they came back to you, marching with proud and victorious tread, reading their glory in a nation's eyes. Will you bear with me while I tell you of another army that sought its home at the close of the late war -an army that marched home in defeat and not in victory, in pathos and not in splendor? Let me picture to you the footsore Confederate soldier, as, buttoning up his faded gray jacket, the parole which was the testimony to his children of his fidelity and faith, he turned his face southward from Appomattox in April, 1865. half-starved, heavy-hearted, Think of him as ragged, enfeebled by want and wounds; having fought to exhaustion, he surrenders. his gun, wrings the hands of his comrades in silence, and lifting his tear-stained and pallid face for the last time to the graves that dot the old Virginia hills, pulls his gray cap over his brow and begins the slow and painful journey. What does he find-let me ask you, who went to your homes eager to find, in the welcome you had justly earned, full payment for four years' sacrificewhat does he find when, having followed the battlestained cross against overwhelming odds, dreading death not half as much as surrender, he reaches the home he left so prosperous and beautiful? He finds his house in ruins, his farms devastated, his slaves free, his stock killed, his barns empty, his trade destroyed, his money worthless; his social system, feudal in its magnificence, swept away; his people without law or legal status, his comrades slain, and the burdens of others heavy on his shoulders. Crushed by defeat, his very traditions are gone; without money, credit, employment, material, or training; and, besides all this, confronted with the gravest problem that ever met human intelligence-the establishing of a status for the vast body of his liberated slaves. What does he do this hero in gray with a heart of gold? Does he sit down in sullenness and despair? Not for a day. Surely God, who had stripped him in his prosperity, inspired him in his adversity. As ruin was never so overwhelming, never was restoration swifter. The soldier stepped from the trenches, into the furrow; horses that had charged Federal guns marched before the plow, and fields that ran red with blood in April were green with the harvest of June. Never was nobler duty confided to human hands than the uplifting and upbuilding of the prostrate and bleeding South, misguided, perhaps, but beautiful in her suffering. In the record of her social, industrial, and political evolution, we await with confidence the verdict of the world. Whither leads the path To ampler fates that leads? Not down through flowery meads Of youth's vainglorious weeds, By battle's flashes gropes a desperate way, Ere yet the sharp, decisive word Light the black lips of cannon, and the sword 'By permission of the publishers, Houghton, Mifflin & Co. |