That was always the story, true not once but many times, and in spirit if not in precise detail of all the battle-wasted corps of our army. As the living image of those choice spirits comes back to memory,--and some of them were my dear friends,--a significant picture weaves past and present together in imagination. Shadowy forms begin to shape themselves: they are phantoms of men in mature vigour, fitter than most of us who survive, and readier to go farthest and stay longest under the fire of that unending battle by which all true progress of our national life must be conquered. And then the picture slowly fades until only a great _vacancy_ is left! For no one need tell us who knew these men that theirs was but brute courage, only the product of military discipline. Seldom has conscience been so large a factor in war, Anglo-Saxon conscience at that, which strikes hard and gives all. The ghastly losses were no accident. Was the sacrifice worth while? We are far enough away from it now to look back calmly and answer solemnly, Yes! There is a keeping of life that is its loss, and a giving of it that is largest, truest gain. The one great inconsistency of our Republic was wiped away, as alone it could be, in blood; one single dangerously-dividing controversy was forever settled by that war. The pledge of our nation's indivisibility is the precious possession of those myriad graves, and the harbinger of our growingly beneficent greatness among the nations of the earth is the power of sacrifice for high principle, to which they bear their silent, their pathetic, but ever-present testimony. To-day, after thirty years, the fruition of the sacrifice is seen. We behold the mighty uprising of a veritably united people in the cause of humanity, and on the heights of Santiago we see men of the South standing shoulder to shoulder with men of the North, mingling their blood victoriously under the old Flag, while the world looks on with admiration not unmixed with fear. End of Project Gutenberg's The Song of the Rappahannock, by Ira Seymour Dodd