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| ‘Apart from the thickest fray’—a scene of 1865 Confederate and Union dead, side by side, in the trenches at Fort Mahone This spectacle of April 3d, the day after Grant's army stormed the Petersburg defenses, is a strikingly real illustration for the poem ‘United.’ With ‘U. S.’ on his haversack lies a Union soldier; beyond, a booted Confederate. Every field of the war was a reminder of the brotherhood of the opponents. The same cast of features indicated their common descent. The commands heard above the roar of cannonading or in the midst of desperate charges revealed the identity of their language and heritage from a heroic past. The unyielding fortitude and unhesitating fidelity displayed by the private in the ranks as he followed his appointed leaders was merely additional proof of the Anglo-Saxon blood that flowed in the veins of the embattled countrymen. During the conflict there was, naturally, a great deal of hostility. The ranks opposed were the ranks of the enemy, no matter how close the bonds of relationship, and against the enemy the utmost destruction must be hurled. Yet in the Eastern and Western armies, friendly relations were established whenever the camps of opposing forces were stationed near each other for any length of time. Since the war this feeling has grown until the saddest feature of the irrepressible conflict is that it was waged between brothers, that every battlefield furnished many a spot like the one above. |
