Evening Republican, Volume 15, Number 24, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 January 1911 — UNION OF THE BLUE AND GRAY [ARTICLE]

UNION OF THE BLUE AND GRAY

National Encampment of All Surviving Veterans of Civil Btrife Is Suggested by Leslie's. The veterans of the Civil strife arerapidly decreasing in numbers, but a national encampment of all-survivor* of both sides of the conflict would be imposing for its very size. Such an event has already been prefigured by smaller gatherings of Grand Army veterans and confederates in celebration* of lesser importances and on frequent occasions when the same impartial' hands have placed flowers on the graves of the heroes of both north and south, says Leslie's Magazine. A great national encampment calling together from every state in the Union the veterans of blue and gray would furnish a most dramatic illustration of a country united in sentiment as well as by the constitution. In the mind of the new generation which ha* grown up since the war there exist* no feeling of sectional hatred or distrust, and if the men who fought one another can now meet together a* brothers about one campfire, Mason and Dixon’s line will once for all be wiped off the map. The discussion itself of such an encampment will do good, but we can see no insuperable barrier to the full realization of the proposal of Commander-in-Chlef Van Sant at the recent encampment at Atlantic City of the Grand Army of the Republic.