William Schouler, A history of Massachusetts in the Civil War: Volume 1

[525] during the year just ended, on almost every field, and in every department of the army, where our flag has been unfurled,—at Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, Vicksburg, Port Hudson, and Fort Wagner; at Chickamauga, Knoxville, and Chattanooga; under Hooker, Meade, Banks, Gilmore, Rosecrans, Burnside, and Grant. In every scene of danger and of duty,—along the Atlantic and the Gulf; on the Tennessee, the Cumberland, the Mississippi, and the Rio Grande; under Dupont, Dahlgren, Foote, Farragut, and Porter,—the sons of Massachusetts have borne their part, and paid the debt of patriotism and valor. Ubiquitous as the stock they descend from, national in their opinions and universal in their sympathies, they have fought shoulder to shoulder with men of all sections, and of every extraction. On the ocean, on the rivers, on the land, on the heights where they thundered down from the clouds of Lookout Mountain the defiance of the skies, they have graven with their swords a record imperishable.

The muse herself demands the lapse of silent years to soften, by the influences of time, her too keen and poignant realization of the scenes of war,—the pathos, the heroism, the fierce joy, the grief, of battle. But, during the ages to come, she will brood over their memory; into the hearts of her consecrated priests will breathe the inspirations of lofty and undying beauty, sublimity, and truth, in all the glowing forms of speech, of literature, and plastic art. By the homely traditions of the fireside; by the headstones in the churchyard, consecrated to those whose forms repose far off in rude graves by the Rappahannock, or sleep beneath the sea,—embalmed in the memories of succeeding generations of parents and children, the heroic dead will live on in immortal youth. By their names, their character, their service, their fate, their glory, they cannot fail.

They never fail who die
In a great cause: the block may soak their gore,
Their heads may sodden in the sun, their limbs
Be strung to city gates and castle walls;
But still their spirit walks abroad. Though years
Elapse, and others share as dark a doom,
They but augment the deep and sweeping thoughts
Which overpower all others, and conduct
The world at last to freedom.

The Edict of Nantes, maintaining the religious liberty of the Huguenots, gave lustre to the fame of Henry the Great, whose name will gild the pages of philosophic history after mankind may have forgotten the martial prowess and the white plume of Navarre. The