1915-05-29
On
the 9th day of April, 18165, when General Lee surrendered to General
Grant at Appomattox court house, the civil war in the United States
substantially ended, though General Tecumseh Sherman and General Joe Johnson,
General Canby and General Taylor, kept firing away at each other for a
fortnight afterward, not knowing when or how to quit. Those old warrior
generals had been fighting so long that it became second nature to them.
Strange to say that there never was any celebration of the greatest day in
American history. General Grant told the Confederates to take their horses and
all their equipments and go home and settle down peacefully. There was no
general hurrah by the Federal army over the victory that had been obtained
through four long years of bloody strife, and the men who carried the muskets
were only too glad to hear the welcome order to get back to their homes in the
north, to their families and their farms and their workshops. In the fifty
years that have passed, the generations that have been born since their fathers
and grandfathers fought to preserve the nation know little or nothing about the
civil war save what they read in story or history. Little do they think that in
that war more than in the war the northern army sacrificed 100,000 men and not
less than $10,000,000,000 of treasure. According to official reports, 2,772,
304 men fought in the ranks of the Union army, and on the Confederate side, it
is estimated that about 950,000 men were enrolled. The boys who answered their
first roll call in 1861 laid down their arms in 1865 seasoned veterans. And,
mind you, it was no picnic they had been enjoying during those four long years
from the time they left home until their return. It was a fair and square,
manly war between the north and the south, with no savage atrocities and no
barbarous excesses like we now read of in the present war; no murdering of
women and children and the sinking of unarmed vessels. The old soldiers are
being mustered out at the rate of ninety-six every twenty-four hours, or at the
rate of four every hour. The American government has dealt liberally with its
soldiers in the matter of pensions; and when the men have answered the last
roll call, their surviving wives are generously provided for, receiving $32 a
month, and upward. In Canada, there are 2602 men and women on the pension rolls,
drawing in the aggregate $520,820 a year. In Hamilton, there were fifty-nine
pension vouchers certified to last March, one half being for women. The civil
war began on the 12th of April, 1861, when the Confederates fired
the first hostile shot on Fort Sumpter, and the actual close was May 26, 1865,
by the surrender of the Confederate forces under General Kirby Smith – fifty years
ago last Wednesday.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Where General John A. Logan, of
Illinois, the greatest volunteer soldier of the nineteenth century, was
commander-in-chief of the grand army of the republic, he had a day set apart
once a year for the decoration of the graves of departed comrades – the 29th
day of May. That celebration will be observed in Hamilton. Of the sixty
pensioners who are always prompt about having their vouchers signed on pension
day, how many will be at the cemetery tomorrow to pay this mark of respect to
the memory of comrades who have answered the last roll call. There are not less
than three thousand American-born citizens living in Hamilton. The writer hopes
that, although they may be living temporarily or permanently in Hamilton, they
will spend an hour tomorrow afternoon in helping the small remnant of the grand
army post decorate the graves of their departed comrades. The committee on
decoration will be thankful for contributions of flowers, and they will be at
the Royal Templars’ new hall, corner of Main and Walnut streets, on Sunday
morning, to receive them. The members of the grand army and all who will take
part with them in the decoration services are requested to meet at the same
hall at half-past one o’clocj, to proceed from there to the cemetery.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
These vernal days of
spring almost take the life out one with their easy temperatures. But we are
never satisfied, and if we had the ordering of seasons and the weather, we
would make a sorry mess of it. The soldiers out in the Carpathian mountains,
who are trying to kill each other, would gladly exchange their weather for a
few days of Hamilton sunshine, budding trees and flowers, and for the velvet
carpet of green grass in the Gore. God help the soldiers who are fighting the
battles of the right. The Hamilton men in the trenches, in the lonely watches
of the night, are thinking of home and the loved ones, and those with wives and
children are looking forward to a time when the last shot will be fired and
they will come marching home to take up the old life in the workshop. That
picture brightens the soldier’s life in the trenches and on the firing line.
Only those who have stood on the firing line or spent the long, weary night on
the outpost as a picket guard can enter into the thoughts of a soldier. There
never was such a war as this one, and let us hope that never again will there
be another of its kind. It is barbaric murder. Those who are old enough to
remember the Chinese stinkpots fired into the camps of opposing forces will
realize the brutality of the Germans with their poisonous gases in the present
war. There will come a day of reckoning. It is bad enough to kill men in a
square, stand up fight, but to poison them with noxious gases is little short
of deliberate murder. No one would have suspected that the German people could
be guilty of such atrocities, for we know them only as good citizens, kind and
affectionate parents, and the most generous neighbors. During the civil war in
the United Staes we had a counterpart of the brutality of the Kaiser in the
person of Captain Wertz, who was in command of Andersonville prison. He was a
German with a commission in the Confederate army. There was no species of
cruelty that he was not equal to. A creek ran through the stockade in which the
union prisoners were confine, into which the filth of that prison camp was
emptied, and this creek was the only water supply for the camp. Across this
creek was a stream of cold water, but the filthy creek was made the deadline,
beyond which the Union prisoners were not allowed to pass under penalty of
being shot by the Confederate guard. Captain Wertz took so much enjoyment of
this cruelty that he used to watch the prisoners trying to steal across the
deadline, for the pleasure of seeing them shot down by the guard. Many a man
crazed from thirst would make a dash for the clear water beyond, to be shot to
death
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
The other day the son
of one of these Andersonville prisoners called upon the writer in a business
way, and he told of his father, who yet has nightmares of the horrors of
Andersonville prison and Captain Wertz. He remembers the shooting down of the
men whose only crime was getting a drink of clear water to quench their burning
thirst. Driven to desperation, the prisoners united in a prayer meeting one
day, looking only to their Heavenly Father for relief from the brutality of Captain
Wertz. While they prayed, a stream of pure water burst forth far enough from
the deadline for the men to get it without the danger of being shot down by the
sentries, and the last we heard of it, that spring was still flowing through
the farm that was formerly Andersonville prison, and it is called the Miracle
spring. The Buffalo veteran referred to in this paragraph has a picture of the
old prison camp hanging prominently in his business office, with the Miracle
spring designated.
-----------------------------------------------------------
By the stroke of his
pen, the czar of Russia wiped out over $90,000,000 revenues that his government
was realizing annually from a monopoly in the manufacture and sale of vodka.,
the favorite intoxicating drink of the Russians. The world laughed at what it
deemed the folly of the czar in giving up so much revenue, and said it would be
of no avail as far as the suppression of the drink habit was concerned.
Probably in no other country could such an illustration of one man power be given.
Here in Canada and in the United States and in Great Britain spasmodic efforts
are made to check drunkenness by law, but there is always a string to the
legislation, that ends in failure. No so with the czar of Russia; when he
determined to put a stop to the sale of vodka in his country, there was no
string to his proclamation. The nobles as well as the humblest Russians were
included, and for the first time in the history of prohibitory laws, the world
has been taught a lesson that prohibition has a meaning, and that manufacture
and sale of intoxicating liquors can be prohibited. And the best of all is, the
proof comes from representatives of other governments who are stationed in Russia.
John H. Snodgrass, consul-general
of the United States, stationed in Russia, sends a detailed report of the
operations of the new prohibitory law to his government, from which we gather a
few very interesting facts. He says that the prohibiting of selling brandy in
the government monopoly stores was introduced throughout the empire from the
beginning of the war, and now has been in force for over six months. One of the
Russian papers has made inquiries concerning the results of this measure, and
has published some of the statistical data that was collected. The following
list shows the consumption of vodka in the city of Moscow in 1914 compared with
the preceding year; July, 412,056 gallons in 1913 and 150,121 gallons in 1914;
September, 729,947 gallons in 1913 and 1,312 gallons in 1914. During the first three
months, vodka could be obtained at the first-class restaurants for the
consumption in the same, the selling of vodka in bottles being prohibited under
a fine of $1,500.
It is observed in the
manufactory districts that labor has become much more productive than when
intoxicating liquors were sold. Formerly at the Moscow mills many of the
workmen would not appear on Monday, and a number of those who did were unfit
for duty in consequence of their Sunday excesses. This is no longer the case;
both the quality and quantity of labor have improved. What a blessing it would
be for Canada if this same condition existed.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Mr. Respectability,
who believes in the rights of his manhood to take a drink when he wants it, and
is opposed to any law that will deprive him of that privilege, take off your
hat to the unfortunate drunkard you meet in the street, for he is a man after
your own heart. He has been doing his share of paying taxes through the
internal revenue and the saloon-keepers taxes, and has for years been asserting
his manhood. Probably there was a time when he would drink a social glass or
let it alone. He has got beyond that stage now, and his bleary eyes tell the
story. Evidently the Good Lord cannot help him, but this great country of
Canada can help him by doing what the czar of Russia has done.
