It was a strange scene, and an impressive one even to those whose hearts were not in sympathy with it in any respect.Many who had been the hardest fighters against the South were in sympathy with much of it, if not with all.But to those who were of the South, it was sublime.
It passed beyond mere enthusiasm, however exalted, and rested in the profoundest and most sacred deeps of their being.There were many cheers, but more tears; not tears of regret or mortification, but tears of sympathy and hallowed memory.The gayly decorated streets, in all the bravery of fluttering ensigns and bunting; the martial music of many bands;the constant tramp of marching troops; the thronged sidewalks, verandas, and roofs; the gleam of polished arms and glittering uniforms;the flutter of gay garments, and the smiles of beautiful women sweet with sympathy; the long line of old soldiers, faded and broken and gray, yet each self-sustained, and inspired by the life of the South that flowed in their veins, marching under the old Confederate battle-flags that they had borne so often in victory and in defeat -- all contributed to make the outward pageant a scene never to be forgotten.But this was merely the outward image; the real fact was the spirit.It was the South.
It was the spirit of the South; not of the new South, nor yet merely of the old South, but the spirit of the great South.When the young troops from every Southern State marched by in their fresh uniforms, with well-drilled battalions, there were huzzas, much applause and enthusiasm;when the old soldiers came there was a tempest: wild cheers choking with sobs and tears, the well-known, once-heard-never-forgotten cry of the battling South, known in history as "the rebel yell".Men and women and children joined in it.It began at the first sight of the regular column, swelled up the crowded streets, rose to the thronged housetops, ran along them for squares like a conflagration, and then came rolling back in volume only to rise and swell again greater than before.Men wept;children shrilled; women sobbed aloud.What was it! Only a thousand or two of old or aging men riding or tramping along through the dust of the street, under some old flags, dirty and ragged and stained.But they represented the spirit of the South; they represented the spirit which when honor was in question never counted the cost; the spirit that had stood up for the South against overwhelming odds for four years, and until the South had crumbled and perished under the forces of war; the spirit that is the strongest guaranty to us to-day that the Union is and is to be;the spirit that, glorious in victory, had displayed a fortitude yet greater in defeat.They saw in every stain on those tattered standards the blood of their noblest, bravest, and best; in every rent a proof of their glorious courage and sacrifice.They saw in those gray and careworn faces, in those old clothes interspersed now and then with a faded gray uniform, the men who in the ardor of their youth had, for the South, faced death undaunted on a hundred fields, and had never even thought it great; men who had looked immortality in the eyes, yet had been thrown down and trampled underfoot, and who were greater in their overthrow than when glory poured her light upon their upturned faces.
Not one of them all but was self-sustaining, sustained by the South, or had ever even for one moment thought in his direst extremity that he would have what was, undone.
The crowd was immense; the people on the fashionable street up which the procession passed were fortunate; they had the advantage of their yards and porticos, and they threw them open to the public.
Still the throng on the sidewalks was tremendous, and just before the old veterans came along the crush increased.As it resettled itself I became conscious that a little old woman in a rusty black dress whom I had seen patiently standing alone in the front line on the street corner for an hour had lost her position, and had been pushed back against the railing, and had an anxious, disappointed look on her face.She had a little, faded knot of Confederate colors fastened in her old dress, and, almost hidden by the crowd, she was looking up and down in some distress to see if she could not again get a place from which she could see.Finally she seemed to give it up, and stood quite still, tiptoeing now and then to try to catch a glimpse.I saw someone about to help her when, from a gay and crowded portico above her, a young and beautiful girl in a white dress, whom I had been observing for some time as the life of a gay party, as she sat in her loveliness, a queen on her throne with her courtiers around her, suddenly arose and ran down into the street.There was a short colloquy.
The young beauty was offering something which the old lady was declining;but it ended in the young girl leading the older woman gently up on to her veranda and giving her the chair of state.She was hardly seated when the old soldiers began to pass.
