to a Government which they asserted had abandoned them,
but the simple faith, the ingrained honesty of these plain-mannered,
plain-spoken boys rose superior to every trial. Brutus, the noblest
Roman of them all, says in his grandest flight:

Set honor in one eye and death in the other,
And I will look on both indifferently.

They did not say this: they did it. They never questioned their duty; no
repinings, no murmurings against their Government escaped their lips,
they took the dread fortunes brought to them as calmly, as unshrinkingly
as they had those in the field; they quailed not, nor wavered in their
faith before the worst the Rebels could do. The finest epitaph ever
inscribed above a soldier's grave was that graven on the stone which
marked the resting-place of the deathless three hundred who fell at
Thermopylae:

Go, stranger, to Lacedaemon,--
And tell Sparta that we lie here in obedience to her laws.

They who lie in the shallow graves of Andersonville, Belle Isle, Florence
and Salisbury, lie there in obedience to the precepts and maxims
inculcated into their minds in the churches and Common Schools of the
North; precepts which impressed upon them the duty of manliness and honor
in all the relations and exigencies of life; not the "chivalric" prate of
their enemies, but the calm steadfastness which endureth to the end. The
highest tribute that can be paid them is to say they did full credit to
their teachings, and they died as every American should when duty bids
him. No richer heritage was ever bequeathed to posterity.

It was in the year 1864, and the first three months of 1865 that these
twenty-five thousand youths mere cruelly and needlessly done to death.
In these fatal fifteen months more young men than to-day form the pride,
the hope, and the vigor of any one of our leading Cities, more than at
the beginning of the war were found in either of several States in the
Nation, were sent to their graves, "unknelled, uncoffined, and unknown,"
victims of the most barbarous and unnecessary cruelty recorded since the
Dark Ages. Barbarous, because the wit of man has not yet devised a more
savage method of destroying fellow-beings than by exposure and
starvation; unnecessary, because the destruction of these had not, and
could not have the slightest effect upon the result of the struggle.
The Rebel leaders have acknowledged that they knew the fate of the
Confederac