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- Sherman’s homeward advance from Savannah. It is needless to point out
its purely dramatic character.
Though the sentiment ascribed in the beginning of the second stanza
must, in the present reading, suggest the historic tragedy of the 14th
of April, nevertheless, as intimated, it was written prior to that
event, and without any distinct application in the writer’s mind. After
consideration, it is allowed to remain.
Few need be reminded that, by the less intelligent classes of the South,
Abraham Lincoln, by nature the most kindly of men, was regarded as a
monster wantonly warring upon liberty. He stood for the personification
of tyrannic power. Each Union soldier was called a Lincolnite.
Undoubtedly Sherman, in the desolation he inflicted after leaving
Atlanta, acted not in contravention of orders; and all, in a military
point of view, if by military judged deemed to have been expedient, and
nothing can abate General Sherman’s shining renown; his claims to it
rest on no single campaign. Still, there are those who can not but
contrast some of the scenes enacted in Georgia and the Carolinas, and
also in the Shenandoah, with a circumstance in a great Civil War of
heathen antiquity. Plutarch relates that in a military council held by
Pompey and the chiefs of that party which stood for the Commonwealth, it
was decided that under no plea should any city be sacked that was
subject to the people of Rome. There was this difference, however,
between the Roman civil conflict and the American one. The war of Pompey
and Caesar divided the Roman people promiscuously; that of the North and
South ran a frontier line between what for the time were distinct
communities or nations. In this circumstance, possibly, and some others,
may be found both the cause and the justification of some of the
sweeping measures adopted.
15. At this period of excitement the thought was by some passionately
welcomed that the Presidential successor had been raised up by heaven to
wreak vengeance on the South. The idea originated in the remembrance
that Andrew Johnson by birth belonged to that class of Southern whites
who never cherished love for the dominant: that he was a citizen of
Tennessee, where the contest at times and in places had been close and
bitter as a Middle-Age feud; the himself and family had been hardly
treated by the Secessionists.
But the expectations build hereon (if, indeed, ever soberly
entertained), happily for the country, have not been verified.
Likely the feeling which would have held the entire South chargeable
with the crime of one exceptional assassin, this too has died away with
the natural excitement of the hour.
16. The incident on which this piece is based is narrated in a newspaper
account of the battle to be found in the “Rebellion Record.” During the
disaster to the national forces on the first day, a brigade on the
extreme left found itself isolated. The perils it encountered are given
in detail. Among others, the following sentences occur:
“Under cover of the fire from the bluffs, the rebels rushed down,
crossed the ford, and in a moment were seen forming this side the creek
in open fields, and within close musket-range. Their color-bearers
stepped defiantly to the front as the engagement opened furiously; the
rebels pouring in sharp, quick volleys of musketry, and their batteries
above continuing to support them with a destructive fire. Our
sharpshooters wanted to pick off the audacious rebel color-bearers, but
Colonel Stuart interposed: ‘No, no, they’re too brave fellows to be
killed.’”
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