This enormous loss in blood and treasure on the part of the South was not spent in the attempts at conquest, the subversion of the Union, or the protection of the slave property, but simply the maintenance of a single principle—­the principle of States Rights, guaranteed by the Federal Constitution.

* * * * *

THE CONFEDERATE DEAD—­THE BATTLEFIELDS OF THE CIVIL WAR—­THE TWO CIVILIZATIONS.

The North has gathered up the bones of the greater part of her vast armies of the dead, commencing the task immediately after the war, and interred them in her vast national cemeteries.  At the head of each is an imperishable head-stone, on which is inscribed the name of the dead soldier, where a record has been kept, otherwise it is simply marked “unknown.”  The North was the victor; she was great, powerful, and rolling in wealth; she could do this, as was right and just.

But where are the South’s dead?  Echo answers from every hill and dale, from every home where orphan and widow weep and mourn, “Where?” The South was the vanquished, stricken in spirits, and ruined in possessions; her dead lie scattered along every battle ground from Cemetery Ridge and the Round Top at Gettysburg, to the Gulf and far beyond the Father of Waters.  One inscription on the head-stones would answer for nearly all, and marked “unknown.”  One monument would suffice for all the army of the dead, and an appropriate inscription would be a slight paraphrase of old Simonides on the shaft erected to the memory of the heroes of Thermopylae—­“Go, stranger, and to Southland tell That here, obeying her behest, we fell.”

The names of the great majority have already been forgotten, only within a circumscribed circle are they remembered, and even from this they will soon have passed into oblivion.  But their deeds are recorded in the hearts of their countrymen in letters everlasting, and their fame as brave and untarnished soldiers will be remembered as long as civilization admires and glories in the great deeds of a great people.  Even some of the great battle grounds upon which the South immortalized itself and made the American people great will soon be lost to memory, and will live only in song and story.  Yet there are others which, through the magnificent tribute the North has paid to her dead, will be remembered for all time.

Looking backwards through the lapse of years since 1861, over some of the great battlefields of the Civil War, we see striking contrasts.  On some, where once went carnage and death hand in hand, we now see blooming fields of growing grain, broad acres of briar and brush, while others, a magnificent “city of the dead.”  Under the shadow of the Round Top at Gettysburg, where the earth trembled beneath the shock of six hundred belching cannon, where trampling legions spread themselves along the base, over crest and through the gorges of the mountain, are now costly parks, with towering monuments—­records of the wonderful deeds of the dead giants, friend and foe.