Now that it is all over, Confederate soldiers like General John B. Gordon have said on a hundred lecture platforms in Northern cities that, having done what he could for States' rights and to destroy the Union, he thanked God above all things else that he was not successful. In the spirit of Abraham Lincoln, that great Southern soldier wrote the last words of his life, in the hope that they would help cement the Union between the North and the South:--"The issues that divided the sections were born when the Republic was born, and were forever buried in an ocean of fraternal blood. We shall then see that, under God's providence, every sheet of flame from the blazing rifles of the contending armies, every whizzing shell that tore through the forests at Shiloh and Chancellorsville, every cannon shot that shook Chickamauga's hills or thundered around the heights of Gettysburg, and all the blood and the tears that were shed are yet to become contributions for the upbuilding of American manhood and for the future defense of American freedom. The Christian Church received its baptism of pentecostal power as it emerged from the shadows of Calvary, and went forth to its world-wide work with greater unity and a diviner purpose. So the Republic, rising from its baptism of blood with a national life more robust, a national union more complete, and a national influence ever widening, shall go forever forward in its benign mission to humanity." Nor must we forget the work of nurses, the members of the Sanitary Commission, and the Christian Commission Movement. The events of the Russian-Japanese war show what is a wonderful progress of science. Japan sent along with her army experts on the water, the food, and the placing of tents, that made typhoid, cholera and the usual diseases impossible. Her surgeons used antiseptic methods, and gangrene was practically unknown in the Japanese hospitals. But the situation was different in 1861. Modern sanitation, surgery, antiseptic methods, chloroform and ether are comparatively recent discoveries. Such anesthetics as the surgeons had were poor in quality and insufficient in quantity. In the camps fever was prevalent. Smallpox, measles and lesser diseases became malignant and wrought terrible ravages. Tents became more dangerous than battle-fields. What the bullet began, the hospitals completed. More men died through disease than through leaden hail. But the noble army of physicians and nurses wrought wonders. Think of it! Twenty-six thousand men dead or dying on the field of Gettysburg!