these Union boys, 32,000 of them, who died
at Andersonville, could at any moment have obtained release by taking
the oath not to renew arms against the South. Some few did escape by
digging under the stockade--but what perils they endured to escape from
the enemy's country! They slept in leaves by day, and travelled by
night. They were pursued by bloodhounds, lay in water and swamps, with
only their lips above the filth until the peril had passed by. They wore
rags, ate roots, shivered in the rains, sweltered in the heat, grew more
emaciated, until more dead than alive they reached the Northern lines.

Now that it is all over, Confederate soldiers like General John B.
Gordon have said on a hundred lecture platforms in Northern cities that,
having done what he could for States' rights and to destroy the Union,
he thanked God above all things else that he was not successful. In the
spirit of Abraham Lincoln, that great Southern soldier wrote the last
words of his life, in the hope that they would help cement the Union
between the North and the South:--"The issues that divided the sections
were born when the Republic was born, and were forever buried in an
ocean of fraternal blood. We shall then see that, under God's
providence, every sheet of flame from the blazing rifles of the
contending armies, every whizzing shell that tore through the forests at
Shiloh and Chancellorsville, every cannon shot that shook Chickamauga's
hills or thundered around the heights of Gettysburg, and all the blood
and the tears that were shed are yet to become contributions for the
upbuilding of American manhood and for the future defense of American
freedom. The Christian Church received its baptism of pentecostal power
as it emerged from the shadows of Calvary, and went forth to its
world-wide work with greater unity and a diviner purpose. So the
Republic, rising from its baptism of blood with a national life more
robust, a national union more complete, and a national influence ever
widening, shall go forever forward in its benign mission to humanity."

Nor must we forget the work of nurses, the members of the Sanitary
Commission, and the Christian Commission Movement. The events of the
Russian-Japanese war show what is a wonderful progress of science. Japan
sent along with her army experts on the water, the food, and the placing
of tents, that made typhoid, cholera and the usual diseases impossible.
Her surgeons used antiseptic methods, and g