seemed to see
dripping from their smoke-blackened flags the blood of our country's
martyrs. For the best part of two days we stood and watched the filing
on of what seemed endless battalions, brigade after brigade, division
after division, host after host, rank beyond rank; ever moving, ever
passing; marching, marching; tramp, tramp, tramp--thousands after
thousands, battery front, arms shouldered, columns solid, shoulder to
shoulder, wheel to wheel, charger to charger, nostril to nostril.

Commanders on horses with their manes entwined with roses, and necks
enchained with garlands, fractious at the shouts that ran along the
line, increasing from the clapping of children clothed in white,
standing on the steps of the capitol, to the tumultuous vociferation of
hundreds of thousands of enraptured multitudes, crying "Huzza! Huzza!"
Gleaming muskets, thundering parks of artillery, rumbling pontoon
wagons, ambulances from whose wheels seemed to sound out the groans of
the crushed and the dying that they had carried. These men came from
balmy Minnesota, those from Illinois prairies. These were often hummed
to sleep by the pines of Oregon, those were New England lumbermen. Those
came out of the coal-shafts of Pennsylvania. Side by side in one great
cause, consecrated through fire and storm and darkness, brothers in
peril, on their way home from Chancellorsville and Kenesaw Mountain and
Fredericksburg, in lines that seemed infinite they passed on.

We gazed and wept and wondered, lifting up our heads to see if the end
had come, but no! Looking from one end of that long avenue to the other,
we saw them yet in solid column, battery front, host beyond host, wheel
to wheel, charger to charger, nostril to nostril, coming as it were from
under the capitol. Forward! Forward! Their bayonets, caught in the sun,
glimmered and flashed and blazed, till they seemed like one long river
of silver, ever and anon changed into a river of fire. No end to the
procession, no rest for the eyes. We turned our heads from the scene,
unable longer to look. We felt disposed to stop our ears, but still we
heard it, marching, marching; tramp, tramp, tramp. But hush--uncover
every head! Here they pass, the remnant of ten men of a full regiment.
Silence! Widowhood and orphanage look on and wring their hands. But
wheel into line, all ye people! North, South, East, West--all decades,
all centuries, all millenniums! Forward, the whole line! Huzza! Huzza!