Go to #2 for the full column.
Posted on 05/29/2004 8:37:30 AM PDT by quidnunc
Memorial Day in my corner of New Hampshire is always the same. A clutch of veterans from the Second World War to the Gulf march round the common, followed by the town band, and the scouts, and the fifth-graders. The band plays "Anchors Aweigh," "My Country, 'Tis of Thee," "God Bless America" and, in an alarming nod to modernity, Ray Stevens' "Everything Is Beautiful (In Its Own Way)" (Billboard No. 1, May 1970). One of the town's selectmen gives a short speech, so do a couple of representatives from state organizations, and then the fifth-graders recite the Gettsyburg Address and the Great War's great poetry. There's a brief prayer and a three-gun salute, exciting the dogs and babies. Wreaths are laid. And then the crowd wends slowly up the hill to the Legion hut for ice cream, and a few veterans wonder, as they always do, if anybody understands what they did, and why they did it.
Before the First World War, it was called Decoration Day — a day for going to the cemetery and "strewing with flowers or otherwise decorating the graves of comrades who died in defense of their country during the late rebellion." Some decorated the resting places of fallen family members; others adopted for a day the graves of those who died too young to leave any descendants.
I wish we still did that. Lincoln's "mystic chords of memory" are difficult to hear in the din of the modern world, and one of the best ways to do it is to stand before an old headstone, read the name, and wonder at the young life compressed into those brute dates: 1840-1862. 1843-1864.
-snip-
(Excerpt) Read more at suntimes.com ...
No, but I have been involved in campaigns, and I wouldn't mind doing more of that kind of work. As a trial attorney, I am always considering how to best persuade an audience.
Thanks Defiance...In this case an admirable stance!
Mark Steyn is the best editorial writer in the world right now. He is unbelievably consistent in quality, and incredibly prolific. What does he turn out, about 2 articles a week? Awesome.
Ping
Yes - it's a myth. He was escaping on the Danville train and I believe they picked him up with his wife. They Yankees tried to humiliate and ridicule him by concocting this story.
The Davis "dress myth" is not without some foundation in fact. According to Shelby Foote ("The Civil War: A Narrative", Vol. III Pg. 1010), when Union cavalry surprised Davis and his escort, Davis inadvertantly grabbed his wife's rain coat instead of his own. In addition, Varina Davis threw her shawl over Jeff Davis to keep him warm when she urged him to flee. Davis was captured wearing both his wife's rain coat and shawl. He was not trying to disguise himself, but the North had a good laugh over it all the same.
Thank you both. I think the discussion I recently read was in "Private Letters of Jefferson Davis."
You think Iraq's a quagmire? Lincoln's ''new birth of freedom'' bogged down into a centurylong quagmire of segregation, denial of civil rights, lynchings. Does that mean the Civil War wasn't worth fighting? That, as Al Gore and other excitable types would say, Abe W. Lincoln lied to us?
>>>>>
I heard this quoted on Bill Bennett's radio program this morning. I think it was when he was talking to Lucianne Goldberg. It is an excellent point to use against the "War is not the Answer" crowd.
Go to #2 for the full column.
Thanks for the ping to full column! It was outstanding!
Mark Stein bump !There is something not just ridiculous but unbecoming about a hyperpower 300 million strong whose elites -- from the deranged former vice president down -- want the outcome of a war, and the fate of a nation, to hinge on one freaky jailhouse; elites who are willing to pay any price, bear any burden, as long as it's pain-free, squeaky clean and over in a week. The sheer silliness dishonors the memory of all those we're supposed to be remembering this Memorial Day.
Playing by Gore-Kennedy rules, the Union would have lost the Civil War, the rebels the Revolutionary War, and the colonists the French and Indian Wars. There would, in other words, be no America. Even in its grief, my part of New Hampshire understood that 141 years ago. We should, too.
from the deranged former vice president down
Steyn swings! And it's going deep! It's going... going...gone!
Mark Steyn hits another one out of the park!
Thanks, Pokey.
Happy Memorial Day to you and yours, and God Bless those who have served this country and given us our freedom.
bump
It seems that the time of Reconstruction saw the systematic denial of civil rights to the whites in the South (e.g. the ability to vote for the candidate of one's choice) could have led to a lot of bitterness and resentment toward black Southerners, for whom the federal government was seen as patron and protector. The segregation, denial of civil rights to blacks, lynchings, etc. were unforgivable infamies, but neither were they unexplainable.
Thanks for the ping. Another Steyn classic.
Thanks for the ping!
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