I see them now...
I see a fair-head lad...I remember, as I awoke from my first long stupor in the hospital after the battle of Ball's Bluff, I heard the doctor say "He was a beautiful boy"...
I see another...We caught each other's eye and saluted. When next I looked he was gone.
I see the brother of the last-the flame of genius and daring on his face--as he rode before us into the wood...,out of which came only dead and deadly wounded men. So, a little later, he rode to his death at the head of his cavalry...
I see one--grandson of a hard rider of the Revolution and bearer of his historic name...He fell at Gettysburg.
I see another quiet figure, of virtuous life and quiet ways...He saved an army corps from disaster, and then a round shot ended all for him.
His brother , a surgeon, who rode, as our surgeons so often did, wherever the troops would go, I saw kneeling in ministration to a wounded man just in rear of our line at Antietam, his horse's bridle round his arm--the next moment his ministrations were ended.
There is one who on this day is always present on my mind. He...fell, using the moment that was left him of life to give all of his little fortune to his soldiers....I observed him in every kind of duty, and never in all the time I knew him did I see him fail to choose that alternative of conduct which was most disagreeable to himself...His few surviving companions will never forget the awful spectacle of his advance alone with his company in the streets of Fredericksburg. In less than sixty seconds he would become the focus of a hidden and annihilating fire from a semicircle of houses. His first platoon had vanished under it in an instant, ten men falling dead by his side. He had quietly turned back to where the other half of his company was waiting, had given the order, "Second Platoon, forward!" and was again moving on, in obedience to superior command, to certain and useless death, when the order he was obeying was countermanded. The end was distant only a few seconds; but if you had seen him with his indifferent carriage, and sword swinging from his finger like a cane, you would never have suspected that he was doing more than conducting a company drill on the camp parade ground. He was little more than a boy, but the grizzled corps commanders knew and admired him; and for us, who not only admired, but loved, his death seemed to end a portion of our life also.
...
...[T]he generation that carried on the war has been set apart by its experience. Through our great good fortune, in our youth our hearts were touched with fire
His brother , a surgeon, who rode, as our surgeons so often did, wherever the troops would go, I saw kneeling in ministration to a wounded man just in rear of our line at Antietam, his horse's bridle round his arm--the next moment his ministrations were ended.
There is one who on this day is always present on my mind. He...fell, using the moment that was left him of life to give all of his little fortune to his soldiers....I observed him in every kind of duty, and never in all the time I knew him did I see him fail to choose that alternative of conduct which was most disagreeable to himself...His few surviving companions will never forget the awful spectacle of his advance alone with his company in the streets of Fredericksburg. In less than sixty seconds he would become the focus of a hidden and annihilating fire from a semicircle of houses. His first platoon had vanished under it in an instant, ten men falling dead by his side. He had quietly turned back to where the other half of his company was waiting, had given the order, "Second Platoon, forward!" and was again moving on, in obedience to superior command, to certain and useless death, when the order he was obeying was countermanded. The end was distant only a few seconds; but if you had seen him with his indifferent carriage, and sword swinging from his finger like a cane, you would never have suspected that he was doing more than conducting a company drill on the camp parade ground. He was little more than a boy, but the grizzled corps commanders knew and admired him; and for us, who not only admired, but loved, his death seemed to end a portion of our life also.
...
...[T]he generation that carried on the war has been set apart by its experience. Through our great good fortune, in our youth our hearts were touched with fire
...
[G]rief is not the end of all. I seem to hear the funeral march become a paean. I see beyond the
forest the moving banners of a hidden column. Our dead brothers still live for us, and bid us think of life, not death--of life to which in their youth they lent the passion and joy of the spring. As I listen , the great chorus of life and joy begins again, and amid the awful orchestra of seen and unseen
powers and destinies of good and evil our trumpets sound once more a note of daring, hope, and will.
forest the moving banners of a hidden column. Our dead brothers still live for us, and bid us think of life, not death--of life to which in their youth they lent the passion and joy of the spring. As I listen , the great chorus of life and joy begins again, and amid the awful orchestra of seen and unseen
powers and destinies of good and evil our trumpets sound once more a note of daring, hope, and will.
-Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., 1884.
