ir way back to their homes and altars. And
here are the American boys confined to the prison ship, the _Jersey_,
starved victims of scurvy and fever, without food, without medicine,
with the corpses of their brothers floating in the water just outside,
boys whose monument stands yonder in Fort Greene. What a tale of
martyrdom is theirs!

Yet the history of heroism holds no more thrilling story than that of
the soldiers of our Civil War. Every other passage, every other
incident, that we have passed in review can be more than duplicated by
soldier boys who have lent new meaning to patriotism and martyrdom. As
many men died in Southern prisons as fell on both sides at the battle of
Gettysburg. This is their story--they counted life not dear unto
themselves; they struggled unto blood, striving against oppression, and
the world itself, with all its beauty, was not worthy of them.

Our prosperous generation, threatened with effeminacy and softness,
needs to re-open the pages of history and to linger long upon the
portraits of our heroic leaders. Theirs was the greatest war that ever
shook the earth. A million Northern men, and over against them a million
Southern men, and a battle line a thousand miles in length! Including
the long-term men and the short-term service, 3,000,000 men engaged in
the conflict! Two thousand two hundred and sixty-one battles fought--if
we mention conflicts in which there were more than five hundred engaged
on each side. When Lee surrendered, his land was desolate. Armies upon
armies of cripples came home to suffer! There were a million widows and
over three million orphan children! Men who at Lincoln's call for troops
left the college and the university discovered, when it was all over,
that it was too late to take up their studies, and lived on like
unfulfilled prophecies. Others, who during those four years poured out
all the vital nerve forces, brought so little strength out of the long,
bitter struggle that they might better have died, and for years have
been in the invalid's chair, looking with wistful eyes on the great
procession of society moving on to industrial victories! The war all
over? The war has been continued in its influences throughout the entire
generation! It never will be over until the last cripple has dropped his
maimed body, until the last child, robbed of a dead father's care, has
recovered his losses, and the last woman who has lived alone through the
years has found her