Democratic Sentinel, Volume 11, Number 23, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 July 1887 — THOSE BATTLE FLAGS. [ARTICLE]

THOSE BATTLE FLAGS.

A Calm View of the Situation—- “ Let Peace.” [From the New York Herald, Ind. ] When making up our judgment on an important matter it is better to be cool than excited. The mere partisan seizes every opportunity to create political capital anil will use this battle flag incident as a stepping stone to the attainment of his personal ambition. But the thoughtful American citizen, whose motto is "With malice toward none, with charity for all,” and who wishes to form an opinion from cold facts rather than Lot prejudices, will look twice before he leaps to a conclusion. Let us take a quiet view of thp situation. A large number of Hags, riddled with bul- # lets—proof of an unparalleled struggle in* which the South stoutly defended them, but were compelled to give way to the allconquering onset of the Boys in Blue—were placed for 6afe-keeping in charge of the United States War Department They were the sacred relics of a fratricidal contest which left behind it a million graves. They had and always will have a value not to be measured by bullion, but by the unquenched and unquenchable spirit of patriotism which summoned our fathers and sons, and even our sisterß and wives, to the battle-field to do and die in defense of the best Government the sun ever shone upon.

These tattered battle flags, some of them borne by Northern troops, many of them wrested from Southern regiments, were for a time on exhibition in the Winder Building in Washington. For nearly a score of years they were one of the chief attractions in the capital of the country. Old soldiers sought them out, ana with flashing eyes recounted the scenes which in this hurrying aga are rapidlly fading from the nation’s memory, to be preserved, however, on the glowing page of history. Strangers from abroad gazed upon them as proof of the ability of a people without a standing army to create an army of volunteers by a magic unknown in other countries to prptect their institutions at all hazards. At last, however, these battle flags were packed away in boxes and stored in cellar or attic, where access to them was impossible. The time had arrived when the spirit of Charles Sumner’s resolution in the Senate, that “it is inexpedient that the names of victories obtained over our fellowcitizens should be placed on the regimental colors of the United States,” began to dissipate the fierce animosities engendered by war. Sumner read the problem aright, but he was twenty years ahead of his time. He saw, and we all Bee it now, that a magnanimous victor can afford to forget; that if North and South are to stand shoulder to shoulder in coming generations the fiery and terrible memories of the past must be obliterated by the loyalty that was born when the family quarrel came to an end. That same policy was adopted by Mr. Cleveland. But he, too, is possibly ahead of his time. When the national drill occurred in Washington and he saw the Northern and Southern soldiers drawn up in line together the scene itself suggested the action which he afterward took. He saw the representatives of the whole country from the lakes to the Gulf march in review. Sectional differences had disappeared forever. Mason and Dixon’s line no ‘ longer existed. Slavery bad been extinguished. North and South stood for “liberty and union, one and inseparable, now and forever. ” Perhaps he recalled the fact that the Ninth Connecticut Volunteers had given back to the Third Mississippi the flag they captured from that regiment, and also the fact that the Confederates had returned their flag to the One Hundred and SixtyFourth New York Volunteers, and other incidents of a like nature, which show that the American people can fight like heroes, and forgive like brothers. With v the consciousness that the spirit of unity is to be fostered, that sectional ties are to be strengthened, he leaped, too hastily, perhaps, to the conclusion that the riddled flags might bo returned to the Northern regiments which had deposited them in the War Department, and to the Southern regiments from which they were captured. It was a plan worthy of "the President of a united people. It had its origin in that prescience which takes in the future and would prepare to fitly welcome it. It reminds us of the words of Grant on his death-bed: “I feel that we are on the eve of a new era, when there is to be great harmony between the Federal and the Confederate. I cannot stay to be a living witness to the correctness of this prophecy, but I feel it within me that it is to be so. * * * Let us have peace. ” But there are reasons why it cannot be at once successfully carried out. Mr. Cleveland recognizes the statute which throws the matter, and rightly, into the hands of Congress. The people, it is said, are not ready for it. As a whole we believe that they are quite ready. At any rate it will be done ten or twenty years hence, when our children take our places. Then the last remnant of sectional feeling will have passed away, and we shall be really one people, tbe noblest, strongest nation on the globe. Air. Cleveland, therefore, throws the responsibility upon the shouldors of Congress and the country. General Fairchild, a churlish aspirant for the Presidency himself, invoked the palsy on the’hand, brain and tongue of the man who hoped to make the country a solid nnit. His capital in trade would disappear were sectional feeling to die. His hope is to lift the tide of hatred that he may ride on its crest to power. His language is that of a charlatan, and his curses can do no better than come home to roost. He does not represent the veterans, only his personal scheme for preferment. Let that pass. The soldiers have beer the first to forget a wrong, aud if they place the country which they saved on a better vantage ground by giving np the trophies of war to those from whom they were captured, history will not be unmindful of the fact that the Northern volunteer knew how to face tbe foe, and, after the battle, to bury everything except his love of his native land in the grave which covers “the lost cause.”