"How many pleasing recollections crowd upon the mind of each soldier as he walks over these grounds, or sitting thoughtfully by his fagots, recalls the history of the past, and compares it with the scenes of the present. The patriots of the Revolution were struggling for liberty, and so are we. They had been oppressed with burdensome taxation,--so were we. They remonstrated,--so did we. They submitted till submission ceased to be a virtue,--and so have we. They appealed to Parliament, but were unheard. Our Representatives in Congress pointed to the maelstrom to which they were driving the ship, but they refused to see it. Our fathers asked for equalities of rights and privileges, but it was refused. The South asked that their claim to territory won by the common blood and treasure of the country be recognized, and that our domestic institutions, as guaranteed by the Constitution, be respected. These petitions were answered by professed ministers of the Church of Jesus Christ in raising contributions from the sacred pulpit on the holy Sabbath of Sharpe's Rifles, to shed Southern blood on common territory. Their Representatives declared, upon the floors of Congress, that they were in favor of 'An Antislavery Constitution, an Antislavery Bible, and an Antislavery God!' What is now left us? Naught but the refuge our fathers had,--the God of Justice and the God of Battles. To him have we appealed, and by his aid and our good right arms we will pass through the ordeal of blood and come out conquerors in the end."[9] [Footnote 9: Campaign from Texas to Maryland, by Rev. Nicholas A. Davis, Chaplain Fourth Texas. Richmond, 1863.] Many thousands of the Union soldiers were thinking, reflecting men. There were ministers, professors in colleges, school-teachers, and learned and scientific men. Few there were who could not read and write. Thousands of them had been teachers and scholars in the Sunday schools. They had thought the war all over, and discussed the causes which led to it. They were familiar with the history of events,--of the struggle between Slavery and Freedom; for the possession of Kansas, where men and women were driven out, their buildings burned, or themselves thrown into rivers, or deliberately murdered, for preferring freedom to slavery. They recalled the attempt to compel the people of the North to return the slaves who were escaping to Canada,--also the kidnapping of free citizens of the North; the imprisonment of men and women for teaching a slave to read the Bible. They remembered that a Northern man could not travel with safety in the South before the war, that Slavery was opposed always to Freedom, that the system crushed the poor laboring men without distinction of color, race, or clime or country; that it was overbearing, imperious, aristocratic, arrogant, and cruel; that it kept the people from obtaining knowledge; that it was the foe of industry, the enemy of science, art, and religion.