Rensselaer Republican, Volume 23, Number 40, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 June 1891 — DECORATION DAY SERMOM [ARTICLE]

DECORATION DAY SERMOM

Two Garlands for Northern aha, - , ■?. '"*■"■• -• * ' " Southern Graves, “To the North, Give Up; to the Sooth Kefep Not Back.”—Bev. Dr. Talmage'i Sermon. Rev. Dr. Talmage preached at Brooklyn Sunday. fText, Isaiah xiii, 6. “I will say to the North, give up, and to the Southy keep not back.” He said: ? Just what my text meant by the North and South 1 can not say, but in the United States the two words are so point-blank in their meaning that no one can doubt. They mean more than East and West, lor, although between these two last there have been rivalries and disturbing ambitions and infelicities and silver bills and World’s Fair controversies, there have been between them no batteries unlimbered, no intrenchmen ts dug, no long line of sepulchral mounds thrown up. It has never been Massachusetts Fourteenth Regiment against Wisconsin Zouaves; it has never been Virginia Artillery against Mississippi Rifles. East-and-West are distinct words and. may sometimes mean diversity of interests, but there is no blood on them. They can be pronounced without any intonation of wailing and deathgroan. But “the North and the South” are words that have been surcharged with tragedies. They are words which suggest that for forty years the clouds had been gathering for a four-year's tempest,- which thirty years ago burst in a fury that shook this planet as it has never been shaken since it swung out fit the first world-building. I thank God that the words have lost some of the intensity which they posessed three decades ago; that a vast multitude of Northern people have moved South, and a vast multitude of Southern people moved North, and there have been intermarriages by the thousand. Northern Colonels have married the daughters of Southern Captains. Texas Rangers have united for life with the daughters of New

York Abolitionists, and their children are half Northern and half Southern, and altogether patriotic. * gut North and South are words that need to be brought into still closer harmonization. I thought that now when \ye are half way between Presidential elections, and sectional anitnor ities are at their lowest ebb, and now just after a Presidential journey when our Chief Magistrate, who was chiefly elected by the North, has been cordially received at the South, and now just after two memorial days, one of them a month ago strewing flowers on Southern graves and the other yesterday strewing flowers on Northern graves, it might be appropriate and useful for me to preach a Sermon which would twist two garlands', one for the Northern dead and the other for the Southern dead, and have the two interlocked in a chain of flowers that shall bind forever the two sections into one; and who knows but that this may be the day when the prophecy of the text, made in regard to the ancients, may be fulfilled in regard to this country, and the North give up its prejudice and the South keep not back its confidence. ‘‘l will say to the Noi’th, give up,and to the South, keep not back.” But, before I put these garlands on the graves, I mean to put them this morning for a little while on the brows of the living men and women of the North and South who lost husbands and sons and brothers during the civil strifa There is nothing more soothing to a wound thai. a cool bandage, and these two garlands are cool from the night dew. What a morning that was on the banks of the Hudson and the Savannah when the son was to start for the war! What fatherly and motherly counsel! What tears! What heart-breaks! What charges to write home often! What little keepsakes put away in the knapsaSk or the bundle that was to be exchanged for the knapsack! The crowd around the depot or the steamboat landing shouted, but the father and mother and sister cried. And how lonely the house seemed after they went home, and what an awfully vacant chair there was at the Christmas and Thanksgiving table! And after the battle what waiting for news! What suspense till the long lists of the killed and wounded were made out! All along the and the Connecticut afid the St. Lawrence and the Ohio and the Oregon and the James and the Albermatle and the Alabama and the Mississippi and the Sacramento there was lamentation and mourning and great woe. Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be eomforted, because they were not. The world has forgotten it, but father and mother have not forgotten it. They may be now in the eighties nineties, but it is a fresh wound and will always remain a fresh wound. Coming down the steep of years the hands that would have steadied those tottering steps have been twentyeight years folded into the last sleep. The childlessness, the widowhood, the orphanage, who has a measuring-line long enough to tell the height of it, the depth of it, the infinity of it? What a mountain, what an Alp,what a Himalayan of piled-up agony of bereavement in the simple statement that 300,000 men of the North were slain and 500,000 men of the South were slain, and hundreds of thousands long afterward through the exhaustions there suffered death. I detain from the top of the tomb these two garlands that I am twisting for a little while that>l may with them soothe the brow of the living. Over the fallen the people said: “Poor fellow! What a pity that he should have been struck down!” We

did not, however, often enough say: 1 ■•“ Poor father 1 Poor mother! Poor wife! Poor child!”and so I sayit now. Have you realized that by that wholesale massacre hundreds of thousands of young people at the North and the South have never had any chance? We who are fathers stand between pur children and the world. We fight their battles, we plan for their welfare, we achieve tneir livelihood, we give them the advice of our superior vears. Among the richest blessings of my life I thank God that my fatner lived to fight my battles until I was old enough to fight myself. Have you realized the fact that our civil ,war pitched out upon the farmfields of the North and the plantations of the South a multitude that no man can number,children without fatherly help and protection?

Under all these advantages which we had of fatherly guidance, what a struggle life has been to most of us! But what of the children two and five and ten years of age, who stood at their mothers lap, with great, round wondering eyes, hearing her read of those who perished in the battle of the Wilderness, their father gone down amid the dead host? Come young men and women, who by such disaster has to make their own way in life, and I will put the garland on your brow.

Before I put the two garlands I am twisting upon the Northern and Southern tombs I detain the garlands a little while that I may put them upon the brow of the living soldiers of the North and South, who, though at variance for a long while, are now at peace and in hearty loyalty to the United States government and ready, 4f-need be, to march shoulder to shoulder against any foreign foe. The twenty-six winters that have passed since the war I think have sufficiently cooled the hatreds that once burned Northward and Southward to allow the remark that they who fought in that conflict were honest on both sides. The chaplains of both armies were honest in their prayers. The faces that went into battle, whether they marched toward the Gulf of Mexico or marched toward the North star, were honest faces. It is too much to ask either side to believe that those who came out from their homes, forsaking father and mother and wife and child, many of them never to return, were not in earnest when they put their lives into the awful exigency. Witness the last scene at family prayer up among the Green Mountains or down by the fields of cotton and sugar cane. Men do not sacrifice their all for fun. Men do not eatomoldy bread and go without bread at all for fun. Men do not sleep unsheltered in equinoctial storms for fun. There were some no doubt on both sides who enlisted for soldiers’ pay or expecting opportunity for violence and pillage or burning i&ith revenge or thirst for human blood, but such cases were so rare many of you who were in the army four years never confronted such an instance of depravity. Yea, there was courage on both sides. They who were at the front know that. When the war opened, the South called the Northern men “mudsills” and the North called the Southern men “braggarts” and “pompous nothings,” but after a few battles nothing more was said about Northern “mudsills” and Southern ‘ ‘braggarts. ” it was an army of lions against an army of lions. It was a flock of eagles mid-sky with iron beak against another flock of eagles iron-beaked. It was thunderbolt against thunderbolt. It was archangel of wrath against archangel of wrath. It was Hancock against Longstreet. It was Kilpatrick against Wade Hampton. It was Slocum against Hill. It was O. O. Howard against Hood. It was Sherman against Stonewall Jackson. It was Grant against Lee. And the men who were under them were just as gallant, and some of them are here and I detain the two garlands that I have twisted for the departed and in recognition of honesty and [>rowess put the coronals upon these iving Federals and Confederates. North and South, we will make a great fuss about them when they are dead.

There will not be room on their tombstones to tell how much we appreciate them. We shall call out the military and explode three volleys over their graves, making all the cemetery ring under our command of “Fire!” We will have long obituary in newspapers telling in what battles they fought, what sacrifices they endured, what flags they captured, in what prisons they suffered, but all that will cbme too late. One word in the living ear of praise for their honesty and crsirage will be worth to them more than a military funeral

two miles lorfg or a pile of flowers half a mile high and ten bands of music playing over the grave “StarSpangled Banner” or “Way Down South in Dixie.” Now, while they are in their declining years and their right knee refuses to work because of the rheumatism they got sleeping on the wet ground on tne banks of the Chicamauga, or their digestive organs are off on furlough because of ,the six months of prison life in which their rations were big slices of nothing, and their ears have never been alert since the cannonade in which they heard so much they have never been able to hear but little since, in these cases I call upon the people of North and South to substitute a little ante-mortem praise for the good deal of post-mortem eu.logium. These two garlands that twisted for Northern and Southern graves shall not be put upan the grass of the tomb until they have first encircled the foreheads of the living. I

will let the front of the wreath come down Over the sear of a scalp vfound made by the sword of a cavalryman at Atlanta and drop a little over the eye that lost its luster in the mine explosion at Petrsburg. Huzza for the living! and camelias and afnaranths and palm branches for the living! • But we must not detain the two garlands any longer from the pillows of those who for a quarter of a century have been prostrate in the dreamless slumber, never oppressed by summer heats or winter s cold. Both garlands are fragrant. Both have in them the sunshine and the shower of this spring time. The colors of both were mixed by Him who mixed the blue pf the sky and the gold of the sunset and the green of the grass and the whiteness of the snow caystal. And I do not care which you put over the Northern grave and which over the Southern grave. Does any one say, “What is the use? None of them will know it. Your Decoration Days both sides of Mason and Dixon’s line are a great waste of flowers.” Ah, I see you have carried too far my idea that praise for the living is better than praisd for the departed. Who says that the dead do not know of the flowers? 1 think they do. The dead are not dead. The body sleeps, but the soul lives, and is uuhindered. No two cities on earth are in such

rapid and constant communication as earth and heaven, and the two great Decoration Days of North and South are better known in realms celestial than terrestrial. With what interest we visit the place of our birth and of our boyhood or girlhood days! And have the departed no interest in this world where they were born and ransomed, where they suffered and triumphed? My Bible does not positively say so, nor does my catechism teach it, bulj my common sense declares it. The departed do know, and the bannered procession that marched the earth yesterday to Northern graves and the bannered procession that marched a month ago to Southern graves were accompanied by two grander though invisible procession that walked the air, processions of the ascended, processions of the martyred, processions of the sainted; and they heard the anthems of the churches and the salvo of the batteries, and they stooped down to breathe the incense of the flowers. These august throngs gathered this morning in these pews and aisles and corridors and galleries are insignificant compared with the mightier throngs of heaven who mingle in this service which we render to God and our country while we twist the! two garlands. Hail spirits multil udinous! Hail spirits blest! Hail \ \ arty red ones come down from the Eng’s palace! How glad we are that you have come back again. Jake the kiss of welcome and these garlands of reminiscence, ye who languished in hospitals or went down under the thunders and lightnings of Fredericksburg and Cold Harbor and Murfresboro and Corinth and Yorktown and above the clouds on Lookout Mourn tain.

And now I hand over the two garlands, both of which are wet with many tears, tears of widowhood and orphanage and childless, tears of suf. sering and tears of gratitude, and as the ceremony must be performed in symbol, there are not being enough flowers to cover all the graves, taka the one garland to the tomb of soma Northern soldier who may yesterday have been omitted in the distribution of sacrament of flowers, and the othei garland to the tomb of some Southern soldier, who may, a month ago, havq been omitted in the distribution ol the sacrament of the flowers, and put both the wreath gently down over the hearts that have ceased to beat. God bless the two garlands! God save the United States of America!