An Echo of Antietam | Page 6

fear death? Who concocted that fable for old wives?
He should have stood that night with Philip in the midst of a host of
one hundred and twenty-five thousand men in the full flush and vigor
of life, calmly and deliberately making ready at dawn to receive death
in its most horrid forms at one another's hands. It is in vain that
Religion invests the tomb with terror, and Philosophy, shuddering,

averts her face; the nations turn from these gloomy teachers to storm its
portals in exultant hosts, battering them wide enough for thousands to
charge through abreast. The heroic instinct of humanity with its high
contempt of death is wiser and truer, never let us doubt, than
superstitious terrors or philosophic doubts. It testifies to a conviction,
deeper than reason, that man is greater than his seeming self; to an
underlying consciousness that his mortal life is but an accident of his
real existence, the fashion of a day, to be lightly worn and gayly doffed
at duty's call.
What a pity it truly is that the tonic air of battlefields--the air that Philip
breathed that night before Antietam--cannot be gathered up and
preserved as a precious elixir to reinvigorate the atmosphere in times of
peace, when men grow faint of heart and cowardly, and quake at
thought of death.
The soldiers huddled in their blankets on the ground slept far more
soundly that night before the battle than their men-folk and women-folk
in their warm beds at home. For them it was a night of watching, a vigil
of prayers and tears. The telegraph in those days made of the nation an
intensely sensitive organism, with nerves a thousand miles long. Ere its
echoes had died away, every shot fired at the front had sent a tremor to
the anxious hearts at home. The newspapers and bulletin boards in all
the towns and cities of the North had announced that a great battle
would surely take place the next day, and, as the night closed in, a
mighty cloud of prayer rose from innumerable firesides, the self-same
prayer from each, that he who had gone from that home might survive
the battle, whoever else must fall.
The wife, lest her own appeal might fail, taught her cooing baby to lisp
the father's name, thinking that surely the Great Father's heart would
not be able to resist a baby's prayer. The widowed mother prayed that if
it were consistent with God's will he would spare her son. She laid her
heart, pierced through with many sorrows, before Him. She had borne
so much, life had been so hard, her boy was all she had to show for so
much endured,--might not this cup pass? Pale, impassioned maids,
kneeling by their virgin beds, wore out the night with an importunity

that would not be put off. Sure in their great love and their little
knowledge that no case could be like theirs, they beseeched God with
bitter weeping for their lovers' lives, because, forsooth, they could not
bear it if hurt came to them. The answers to many thousands of these
agonizing appeals of maid and wife and mother were already in the
enemy's cartridge-boxes.

IV
The day came. The dispatches in the morning papers stated that the
armies would probably be engaged from an early hour.
Who that does not remember those battle-summers can realize from
any telling how the fathers and mothers, the wives and sisters and
sweethearts at home, lived through the days when it was known that a
great battle was going on at the front in which their loved ones were
engaged? It was very quiet in the house on those days of battle. All
spoke in hushed voices and stepped lightly. The children, too small to
understand the meaning of the shadow on the home, felt it and took
their noisy sports elsewhere. There was little conversation, except as to
when definite news might be expected. The household work dragged
sadly, for though the women sought refuge from thought in occupation,
they were constantly dropping whatever they had in hand to rush away
to their chambers to face the presentiment, perhaps suddenly borne in
upon them with the force of a conviction, that they might be called on
to bear the worst. The table was set for the regular meals, but there was
little pretense of eating. The eyes of all had a far-off expression, and
they seemed barely to see one another. There was an intent, listening
look upon their faces, as if they were hearkening to the roar of the
battle a thousand miles away.
Many pictures of battles have been painted, but no true one yet, for the
pictures contain only men. The women are unaccountably left out. We
ought to see