hem have been swept away by the winds or overgrown with weeds;
others, like Fort Wagner, have been washed away by the waves. But
neither winds nor waves are likely to disturb the monuments or the
cemeteries of our soldiers and sailors. Where they were placed, there
they remain; "and there they will remain forever."

The seventy-eight National Cemeteries distributed over the country
contain the remains of three hundred and eighteen thousand four hundred
and fifty-five men, classed as follows: known, 170,960; unknown,
147,495; total, 318,455. And these are not half of those whose deaths
are attributable to their service in the armies and navies of the United
States and the Confederate States, who are buried in all sections of the
Union and in foreign lands.

In some of these cemeteries, as at Gettysburg, Antietam, City Point,
Winchester, Marietta, Woodlawn, Hampton, and Beaufort, by means of
public appropriations and private subscriptions, statues and other
monuments have at different times been erected; and many others
doubtless will be erected in them hereafter. Some of them are in
secluded situations, where for many mites the population is sparse, and
the few people that live near them cherish tenderer recollections of the
"Lost Cause" than of that which finally won. But such of them as are
contiguous to cities are places of interest to more or less of the
neighboring population; and, in some of them, there are commemorative
services upon Memorial Days.

These cemeteries have many features in common; and much that may be said
of one of them may also be said of the others--merely changing the
names.

It happened to the present writer to visit the National Cemetery at
Beaufort, South Carolina, to deliver an oration on Memorial Day, 1881,
in the midst of ten thousand graves of the soldiers and sailors of the
department of the South and South Atlantic blockading squadron. The dead
interred in these thirty acres of graves are: known, 4,748, unknown,
4,493; total, 9,241. Among the trees planted in this cemetery is a
willow, grown from a branch of the historic tree which once overshadowed
the grave of Napoleon at St. Helena.

Generals Thomas W. Sherman and John G. Foster, who commanded that
department, and Admirals Dupont and Dahlgren, who commanded that
squadron, all died in their Northern homes since the peace, and their
graves are not to be looked for here. The same may be said of hundreds
of military and naval offic