Of the latter, the
marble pantheon erected by the State of Illinois, and the beautiful
marble and bronze memorial structure of the State of Iowa, are probably
the finest. The marble column erected by Wisconsin carries at its summit
a great bronze effigy of "Old Abe," the famous eagle, mascot of the
Wisconsin troops. Guides to the battlefield are prone to relate to
visitors--especially, I suspect, those whose accents betray a Northern
origin--how "Old Abe," the bird of battle, went home and disgraced
himself, after the war, by his ungentlemanly action in laying a setting
of eggs.
The handsomest monument to an individual which I saw upon the
battlefield was the admirable bronze bust of Major General Martin L.
Smith, C.S.A., and the one which appealed most to my imagination was
also a memorial to a Confederate soldier: Brigadier-General States
Rights Gist. Is there not something Roman in the thought that, thirty or
more years before the war, a southern father gave his new-born son that
name, dedicating him, as it were, to the cause of States Rights, and
that the son so dedicated gave his life in battle for that cause? The
name upon that stone made me better understand the depth of feeling that
existed in the South long years before the War, and gave me a clearer
comprehension of at least one reason why the South made such a gallant
fight.
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