A similar halo invests our National Cemeteries—­which are the most permanent mementos of our sanguinary Civil War.

Nature labors diligently to cover up her scars.  Most of the battle-fields of the Rebellion now show growths of use and beauty.  Many of the structures of that great conflict have already ceased to be.  Some of them 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 officers who performed valuable services on these shores and along these coasts, and have since “passed over to the great majority.”