ATIONS.

The North has gathered up the bones of the greater part of her vast
armies of the dead, commencing the task immediately after the war, and
interred them in her vast national cemeteries. At the head of each is
an imperishable head-stone, on which is inscribed the name of the dead
soldier, where a record has been kept, otherwise it is simply marked
"unknown." The North was the victor; she was great, powerful, and
rolling in wealth; she could do this, as was right and just.

But where are the South's dead? Echo answers from every hill and dale,
from every home where orphan and widow weep and mourn, "Where?"
The South was the vanquished, stricken in spirits, and ruined in
possessions; her dead lie scattered along every battle ground from
Cemetery Ridge and the Round Top at Gettysburg, to the Gulf and far
beyond the Father of Waters. One inscription on the head-stones
would answer for nearly all, and marked "unknown." One monument would
suffice for all the army of the dead, and an appropriate inscription
would be a slight paraphrase of old Simonides on the shaft erected
to the memory of the heroes of Thermopylae--"Go, stranger, and to
Southland tell That here, obeying her behest, we fell."

The names of the great majority have already been forgotten, only
within a circumscribed circle are they remembered, and even from this
they will soon have passed into oblivion. But their deeds are recorded
in the hearts of their countrymen in letters everlasting, and their
fame as brave and untarnished soldiers will be remembered as long as
civilization admires and glories in the great deeds of a great
people. Even some of the great battle grounds upon which the South
immortalized itself and made the American people great will soon be
lost to memory, and will live only in song and story. Yet there are
others which, through the magnificent tribute the North has paid to
her dead, will be remembered for all time.

Looking backwards through the lapse of years since 1861, over some of
the great battlefields of the Civil War, we see striking contrasts.
On some, where once went carnage and death hand in hand, we now see
blooming fields of growing grain, broad acres of briar and brush,
while others, a magnificent "city of the dead." Under the shadow of
the Round Top at Gettysburg, where the earth trembled beneath the
shock of six hundred belching cannon, where trampling legions spread
themselves along the base, over crest and throug