h the gorges of the
mountain, are now costly parks, with towering monuments--records of
the wonderful deeds of the dead giants, friend and foe.

Around the Capital of the "Lost Cause," where once stood forts and
battlements, with frowning cannon at each salient, great rows of
bristling bayonets capping the walls of the long winding ramparts,
with men on either side standing grim and silent, equally ready and
willing to consecrate the ground with the blood of his enemy or his
own, are now level fields of grain, with here and there patches of
undergrowth and briars. Nothing now remains to conjure the passer-by
that here was once encamped two of the mightiest armies of earth, and
battles fought that astounded civilization.

On the plains of Manassas, where on two different occasions the
opposing armies met, where the tide of battle surged and rolled back,
where the banners of the now vanquished waved in triumph from every
section of the field, the now victors fleeing in wild confusion,
beaten, routed, their colors trailing in the dust of shame and defeat,
now all to mark this historic battle ground is a broken slab or
column, erected to individuals, defaced by time and relic seekers, and
hidden among the briars and brush.

From the crest and along the sides of Missionary Ridge, and from the
cloud-kissed top of Lookout Mountain, to Chickamauga, where the flash
of cannon lit up the valley and plain below, where swept the armies
of the blue and the gray in alternate victory and defeat, where the
battle-cry of the victorious mingled with the defiant shouts of the
vanquished, where the cold steel of bayonets met, and where brother's
gun flashed in the face of brother, where the tread of contending
armies shook the sides and gorges of the mountain passes, are now
costly granite roadways leading to God's Acre, where are buried the
dead of the then two nations, and around whose border runs the "River
of Death" of legend, Chickamauga. Over this hallowed ground floats the
flag of a reunited country, where the brother wearing the uniform of
the victor sleeps by the side of the one wearing the uniform of
the vanquished. Along the broad avenues stand lofty monuments or
delicately chiseled marble, erected by the members of the sisterhood
of States, each representing the loyalty and courage of her respective
sons, and where annually meet the representatives of the Frozen North
with those of the Sunny South, and in one grand chorus reh