It is too much to ask either side to
believe that those who came out from
their homes, forsaking father and
mother and wife and child, many of
them never to return, were not in earn
est when they put their life into awful
exigency. Witness the last scene at
family prayers up among the Green
mountains, or down by the fields of
cotton and sugar cane. Men do not
sacrifice their all for fan. Men do not
eat moldy bread, or go without bread
at all. for fun. Men do not sleep un
sheltered in equinoctial storms for fun.
There were some, no doubt, on both
cl.lswi otKj-i an hcforl fj-ht. oAmianr no t- r r
. .t - ..: J. i
expecting opportunity for violence and
pillage, or burning with revenge and
thirst for human blood, but such cases
were so rare many of you who were
in the war four years never confronted
such an instance of depravity.
As chaplain of a Pennsylvania regi
ment and as a representative of the
United States Christian commission I
A. i ?
was lor a wnue at tne ironc, anu in
those hospitals at Hagerstown and Will
iamsburg, and up and down the Poto
mac, where all the churches and farm
houses were filled with wounded and
dying Federal and Confederates, I for
got amid the horrors to ask on which
side they fought, when, with what lit
tle aid I could take thein for their
suffering bodies and the mightier aid I
could pray for their souls, I passed the
days and months amid scenes that in
my memory seem like a ghastly dream
rather than possible reality.
