Democratic Sentinel, Volume 15, Number 20, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 June 1891 — THE DEAD HEROES. [ARTICLE]

THE DEAD HEROES.

Kobert G. inger-oll’s Famous Speech at Indianapolis. The past, as it were, rises before me like a dream. Again we are in the great struggle for national life. We hear the sound of preparation—the music of boisterous drums—the silver voices of heroic bugles- Wo see thousands of assemblages and hear the appeals of orators; we see the pale cheeks of women and the flushed faces of men; and in these assemblages we see all the dead whose dust we have covered with flowers. W’e lose sight of them no more. W’e are with them when they enlist in the great army of freedom. We see them part with those they love. Some are walking for the last time in quiet woody ,places with the maidens they adore. W’e hear the whisperings and the sweet vows of eternal love as they lingeringly part forever. Others are bending over cradles kissing^babes that are asleep. Some are receiving the blessings of old men. Some are parting with mothers who hold them and press them to their hearts again and again, and say nothing; and. some are talking with wives and endeavoring, with brave words spoken in bold tones, tojdrive away the awful fear. We see them part. We see the wife standing in the door with the babe in her arms—standing in tho suniight sobbing. At the turn of the road a hand waves. She answers by holding high fn her loving hands tho child. He is gone, and forever.

We see them all as they march proudly away under the flaunting flags, keeping time to the grand wild music of war; marching down the streets of the great cities, through the towns and across the prairies; down to the fields of glory, to do and to die for the eternal right. We go with them one and all; we a-e by their side on all the gory fields, in all the hospitals of pain, in all the weary marches. We stand guard with them in the wild storm and under the quiet stars. Wo are with them in the ravines running with blood —in the furrows of old fields. We are with them between contending hosts, mihble to move, wild with thirst, the life-ebbing slowly away among the withered,leaves. We see them pierced by balls aM tbf'h' with” Shells ■'ln the trenches-of the ferts, and in the whirlwind oi the Charge, where men became iron with ne-ryes of steel, 'We are With them in the prisons of hatred aind famine, but human speech can never tell what'they endured. We are tU home when ’tfie m-ws'tttmes that they are dead. We see the-maiden in the shadow of her sorrow. We i-ee the silver head of the old man bowed with grief. The past rises before us and we see 4,000,000 human beings governed by the l'ash—we see -them bound hand and foot hear tho strokes of the cruel whip —we see the hounds tracking women through tangled swamps—we see the babes so’d from the breasts of' mothers. Cruelty unspeakable;*outrage infinite! Four million bodies in chains—4,ooo,ooo souls in fetters—all the sar-red relations of wife,' mother, father, and child trampled beneath the brutal feet of might—and all this done under our own beautiful banner of the free. The past ©rises before us. We hear the roar and shriek of the bursting shell. The broken fetters fall. Their heroes died. We look, and instead of slaves we see men, women, and children. The wand of progress touches the auction block, the slave pen, and the whipping post, and we see homes and, firesides, schoolhouses and books, and where all was ,want and crime and cruelty and fear, wo see the faces of the free. Those heroes aro dead. They died for liberty; they died for us. They are at rest. They sleep in tho land they made free, under the flag they rendered stainless, under the solemn pines, the sad hemlock, tbe tearful willows, the embracing vines. They sleep beneath the shadows of the clouds, careless alike of sunshine or stonn, each in the windowless palace of rest. Earth may run red with other wars—they are at peace. In the midst of battle, in the roar of conflict they found the serenity of death. I have one sentiment for tho soldiers living and dead —cheers for the living, tears for the dead.