eeds
of heroism performed by both sides in the struggle. The captains and the
armies that, after long years of dreary campaigning and bloody, stubborn
fighting, brought the war to a close, have left us more than a reunited
realm. North and South, all Americans, now have a common fund of
glorious memories. We are the richer for each grim campaign, for each
hard-fought battle. We are the richer for valor displayed alike by
those who fought so valiantly for the right, and by those who, no less
valiantly, fought for what they deemed the right. We have in us nobler
capacities for what is great and good because of the infinite woe and
suffering, and because of the splendid ultimate triumph. We hold that it
was vital to the welfare, not only of our people on this continent, but
of the whole human race, that the Union should be preserved and slavery
abolished; that one flag should fly from the Great Lakes to the Rio
Grande; that we should all be free in fact as well as in name, and that
the United States should stand as one nation--the greatest nation on the
earth. But we recognize gladly that, South as well as North, when the
fight was once on, the leaders of the armies, and the soldiers whom they
led, displayed the same qualities of daring and steadfast courage, of
disinterested loyalty and enthusiasm, and of high devotion to an ideal.

The greatest general of the South was Lee, and his greatest lieutenant
was Jackson. Both were Virginians, and both were strongly opposed to
disunion. Lee went so far as to deny the right of secession, while
Jackson insisted that the South ought to try to get its rights inside
the Union, and not outside. But when Virginia joined the Southern
Confederacy, and the war had actually begun, both men cast their lot
with the South.

It is often said that the Civil War was in one sense a repetition of
the old struggle between the Puritan and the Cavalier; but Puritan and
Cavalier types were common to the two armies. In dash and light-hearted
daring, Custer and Kearney stood as conspicuous as Stuart and Morgan;
and, on the other hand, no Northern general approached the Roundhead
type--the type of the stern, religious warriors who fought under
Cromwell--so closely as Stonewall Jackson. He was a man of intense
religious conviction, who carried into every thought and deed of his
daily life the precepts of the faith he cherished. He was a tender and
loving husband and father, kindhearted and gentle to all