"’It is very true that we may catch a glimpse of things here and there, but for one item that is recorded, there will be a thousand lost. There are the marches, and the counter-marches, the snow, the rain, and the hail of winter; the heats and droughts of summer; weakness and sickness arising from the want of all things, hunger and fatigue. O, there is none but the Lord from heaven Himself who can ever know all that our brave fellows have endured before they breathed their precious lives away in the service of their country. Just consider for a moment how their decaying bodies have been found weeks and months afterwards in the deep ravines, at the bottom of swamps and rivers, in the wild tangled thickets of the forest, upon every highway, and under every green tree. Here a poor wounded fellow wandering away by himself and perishing all alone in a strange land far from home and his native state, who knows all about the end of that man; and who shall write his heroism and the suffering he endured before the Lord put an end to his pains, and took him home to heaven to Himself? Alas, alas! There is no one to tell us how he suffered, fought and died. We only know that he marched forth to the field, in health and strength and vigorous life, and did his part in pulling down this terrible rebellion, a wicked rebellion indeed, built upon the broken laws of human nature, an outrage upon humanity, and a sin against God. But those gallant heroes who have fallen in the war often said, that it was simply their part to do their duty, and, if they fell, their wives and children would at least be free, and not forgotten by a grateful and Christian government. (They shall not be forgotten). When I look around me, and see the great advance along the whole line already in the way of human liberty, the results are perfectly grand and most inspiring. With the exception of a small section of the Confederacy, it may be truthfully stated that the armies of the Union have already freed all the slaves. From the Potomac to the Rio Grande one grand song of liberty has been sung by the emancipated race. Was there ever such a shout of joy heard since the Israelites escaped from Egyptian slavery, when Pharaoh and all his host perished in the Red Sea? Who would ever have imagined that in our own day history would thus have repeated itself? But it has done so all the same; and for the self-same reason our own poor, oppressed people have raised one universal shout to Heaven, and sung all along the whole line, ’I will sing unto the Lord, for he hath triumphed gloriously; the horse and his rider hath he thrown into the sea.’ O, my brother! ye brave soldiers of the army of the Union, ye have deserved well of your God and of your country, and your honors will never fade while sun and moon endure. White and black soldiers, shoulder to shoulder, have marched to the field; they have overthrown their terrible foe, and they have cleared the way for the