The Broken Sword

now the war was over, that the country should settle down on the great common principle of the constitution-the principle that

even pale stars be totally obscured by a central sun blighting and destroying every germ of constitutional liberty?" The Union, said they, was safe in the hands of President

ces were still prosecuting their conquests, not against disciplined armies in the field, but against men, women and children, in the lawful pursuit of peace and happiness, with a vengeance hourly reinforced by new resources a

st there could be no intrusion, because the baser passions were fenced upon the outside; and amid this sad continuity of graves the heart would be uplifted in gratitude to God, who in his great mercy had given to the nineteenth century and to the South, such undying examples of patriotism and valor. Here lie the bones of men who dared to say, when the political system of the South was strangely inverted, that it was such a menace to southern institutions that it could not go unchallenged; a palpaple violation of the public faith. To what other convulsions and changes are we

r, whitelocked and furrowed, in introducing the orator observed with a proper decorum. "For what Stonewall Jackson and his brave men did, we have no apologies to make here or e

atriotic address which I herein give to the reader,

s, Ladies a

of Stonewall Jackson; and I remembered that every battle order he ever wro

ssion, barricaded with human bones. I thought of the seas of human slaughter, w

o once girdled the earth with a cincture of fire, and marked its boundaries with

nube, the Nile, and wherever else the scarlet standards of fanaticism flaunted their chal

ery, of incorrigible wrong; Cossacks all, who kn

n 'beauty and booty,' and I thought of the angel of God's mercy proclaiming an armistice; giving a refreshing peace to the saturat

nnae; of Pompey at Pharsalia; of C?sar at the Rubicon; of Napoleon at Marengo; and I thought, as Vat

at Miletus; of the fifth paragraph in the will of Napoleon; and then I thought of the bleeding earth these warriors had scarified and scourged, until they were drunken with excess of human slaughter; and then I

eaven he was supplicating his Father to guide and guard his poor country in her sore hour of travail, and I thought if there were a Per

me this great country, by a vigorous discipline, has completely obliterated lines and boundaries that once circumscribed the ambition of men. A trifling order methinks of Jackson, but it cancelled our charter of freedom, it rendered a nude pact our declaration of independence. It was only the nod of the head of an unlettered peasant at Hou

d guard, there glided down the echoing corridors of time this sententious orde

the carnage, called a halt. It was a night of exasperation, of despair. Ten million people watched, as watchers never watched before, the last flickering of a life that laid down its all, at the altar of love and duty. Those ten million people kept their

, to become the storm spirit in some great crisis. When he dies the face of history is saddened and obscured, and a twilight like that observed under Southern skies, falls upon the world. Such a person may be fitly called the courier of fate; or better still, the tr

sword and cannon cut a red swath through the capital cities of Europe; and partitioned the world into two dominions, as if he were only dividing in twain an apple. I speak not of him, who

st betwixt the Confederacy and independence a pall so

f war he appeared almost supernaturally mated. Whether his unparalleled victories were the result of combinations essentially tactical, of met

son and the "Ironsides" would have been in accord. His was the spirit that resolved combinations in his favor. His masterly apprehension of issues diminished the carnage by plucking the fruit before it was fully ripe. In war as elsewhere he was a

entious answer from the man who had fought under the shadow of his eagles at Wagram and Marengo. It was with something of this vague, indefinable superstition, of thi

manoeuvres of a corps. Strange fatuity! A score of battle fields prove the opinion false. If such had been the

o of Toulon never caressed the fire throated 12 pounder more ardently than did Jackson. He would have swept every obstruction from the field with a single battery, or failing in this would have "pressed" them with the bayonet. His camp fires are now ext

of Stonewall Jackson, but on either side of us are monuments a

one side that all the blood that would be spilt, could be wiped up with a silk handkerchief. Another on the other side with equal bravado answered that he would live to call t

der; a blazing up as of dry heath; a shout ever so frightful, and half infernal, and the whole universe seemed wrapt in flame and wild tumult. But the fire has di

God's will' while he whetted his sword blade to drink the slaughter of women, and nursing babes at Drogheda.

roclamation was the aftermath of the pernicious broadcasting of seed sown by Horace Greely, Gerritt Smith, and Joshua R. Giddings. The old stubble requir

uadrons, were an aggregation of iconoclasts, fierce destroyers of images, creeds, institutions, tr

ed the asserted right of coercion, of frenzy against frenzy, patriotism, anger, vani

quet. Hither he came with as high a resolve as ever animated Peter the Hermit, to plant upon the sand dunes of Palestine

Henry House." Just beyond is a dark confused death wrestle. Forty thousand athletes against e

is hurled like an immense projectile upon ranks of human flesh. There is a halt, a recoil; cannon spit out their fire, their hail, their death upon bosoms bared to the shock. 'There stands Jackson like a Stonewall.

Manassas, where he cut their communications and decoyed their columns into the iron jaws of Longstreets reserves. Such achievements were not accidental. No manoeuvre could mislead the cl

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flags with the same joy that once greeted the eagles of Napoleon. Withered skeleton hands now, had borne them at the head of charging squadrons and battalions, the guidons of victorious armies-the guerdon of a nation's trust and faith. If out of the cold, dead white stars could come again the old gleam of light as it lighted up the line of direction over the mountain passes of Virginia and the valley of the Shenandoah, what a ha

s old friend, Colonel Seymour, "for his patriotic address

d been carefully plucked and assorted by her young mistress, and with very tender hands Alice had placed them in a stone urn at the foot of a grave that seemed t

de. Grate king! De yankeys mouter shot dat po chile wid a steer kyart; he wus de wustest lookin' humans I eber seed in my born days, und he wus de onliest chile of his po mammy. Dare's her grabe too. Dare day lay side by side, und de Lord in hebben only knows what day's dun und sed erbout dis here war up yander. I'm ergwine ter v strow dese lillies o' de walley on boff on em. Po fings, I hopes und prays day has dun und gon froo de purly gates whey dare aint no war, nur tribulation of sperrets nudder." And the old negro knelt reverently at the graves and placed the white

nking of a grave over yonder in old Virginia, and wondering if some fair hand was n

adows from magnolias and weeping willows were deepening and darkening all the while, when the Colonel, his daug