The Creed of the Old South 1865-1915Gildersleeve, Basil L. (Basil Lanneau)
History
The Creed of the Old South 1865-1915
Gildersleeve, Basil L. (Basil Lanneau)
Greece -- History -- Peloponnesian War, 431-404 B.C.; United States -- History -- Civil War, 1861-1865
"'Light marching order' implies that a soldier may carry upon his person
only a few of the more obvious necessities of life and no luxuries save
tobacco. But a soldier must be clad even to sixty rounds of ball
cartridge. Small wonder is it then, if only the lightest toothbrush
drawn through the buttonhole of his blouse must suffice as an epitome of
the refinements of life. Many of the victories of our adversaries were
fairly attributed to the scantier attire and lighter marching order of
the men."--Atlantic Monthly, May, 1893, p. 214.]
[Note: DAVID RAMSAY, grandson of the historian and biographer of
Washington of the same name, my fellow-student at Goettingen in 1852,
fell after heroic services at Battery Wagner in 1863. What the state,
what the country lost in the promise of that rare man, this is not the
place to rehearse. Scholar, wit, embodiment of all the inherited social
graces of what we once called "the better days," delightful companion,
devoted and generous friend, he is still in memory part of my life.]
Now I make no doubt that most of the readers of The Atlantic have got
beyond the Rothermel stage, and yet I am not certain that all of them
appreciate the entire clearness of conscience with which we of the South
went into the war. A new patriotism is one of the results of the great
conflict, and the power of local patriotism is no longer felt to the
same degree. In one of his recent deliverances Mr. Carnegie, a canny
Scot who has constituted himself the representative of American
patriotism, says, "The citizen of the republic to-day is prouder of
being an American than he is of being a native of any State in the
country." What it is to be a native of any State in the country,
especially an old State with an ancient and honorable history, is
something that Mr. Carnegie cannot possibly understand. But the "to-day"
is superfluous. The Union was a word of power in 1861 as it is in 1891.
Before the secession of Virginia a Virginian Breckinridge asked: "If
exiled in a foreign land, would the heart turn back to Virginia, or
South Carolina, or New York, or to any one State as the cherished home
of its pride? No. We would remember only that we were Americans." Surely
this seems quite as patriotic as Mr. Carnegie's utterance; and yet, to
the native Virginian just quoted, so much stronger was the State than
the central government that, a few weeks after this bold speech, he went
into the war, and finally perished in the war. "A Union man," says his
biographer, "fighting for the rights of his old mother, Virginia." And
there were many men of his mind, noted generals, valiant soldiers. The
University Memorial, which records the names and lives of the alumni of
the University of Virginia who fell in the Confederate war, two hundred
in number,--this volume, full "of memories and of sighs" to every
Southern man of my age, lies open before me as I write, and some of the
noblest men who figure in its pages were Union men; and the Memorial of
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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