Around the Capital of the “Lost Cause,” where once stood forts and battlements, with frowning cannon at each salient, great rows of bristling bayonets capping the walls of the long winding ramparts, with men on either side standing grim and silent, equally ready and willing to consecrate the ground with the blood of his enemy or his own, are now level fields of grain, with here and there patches of undergrowth and briars.  Nothing now remains to conjure the passer-by that here was once encamped two of the mightiest armies of earth, and battles fought that astounded civilization.

On the plains of Manassas, where on two different occasions the opposing armies met, where the tide of battle surged and rolled back, where the banners of the now vanquished waved in triumph from every section of the field, the now victors fleeing in wild confusion, beaten, routed, their colors trailing in the dust of shame and defeat, now all to mark this historic battle ground is a broken slab or column, erected to individuals, defaced by time and relic seekers, and hidden among the briars and brush.

From the crest and along the sides of Missionary Ridge, and from the cloud-kissed top of Lookout Mountain, to Chickamauga, where the flash of cannon lit up the valley and plain below, where swept the armies of the blue and the gray in alternate victory and defeat, where the battle-cry of the victorious mingled with the defiant shouts of the vanquished, where the cold steel of bayonets met, and where brother’s gun flashed in the face of brother, where the tread of contending armies shook the sides and gorges of the mountain passes, are now costly granite roadways leading to God’s Acre, where are buried the dead of the then two nations, and around whose border runs the “River of Death” of legend, Chickamauga.  Over this hallowed ground floats the flag of a reunited country, where the brother wearing the uniform of the victor sleeps by the side of the one wearing the uniform of the vanquished.  Along the broad avenues stand lofty monuments or delicately chiseled marble, erected by the members of the sisterhood of States, each representing the loyalty and courage of her respective sons, and where annually meet the representatives of the Frozen North with those of the Sunny South, and in one grand chorus rehearse the death chants of her fallen braves, whose heroism made the name of the nation great.  To-day there stands a monument crowned with laurels and immortelles, erected by the State to the fallen sons of the “Dark and Bloody Ground,” who died facing each other, one wearing the blue, the other the gray, and on its sides are inscribed:  “As we are united in life, and they in death, let one monument perpetuate their deeds, and one people, forgetful of all aspirations, forever hold in grateful remembrance all the glories of that terrible conflict, which made all men free and retaining every star in the Nation’s flag.”