Explore "The Hoe Cake of Appomattox" by Ellis Spear on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
In considering the unity of that great brotherhood of men who composed the armies of the United States in the war for sustaining the government, and perpetuating the form of it made by the founders, we have been giving attention to every phase of the many common conditions which formed our common experience and bound us so firmly together, excepting those of a social and physical character. The great and firm basis of this lifelong comradeship is, of course, the common devotion and the common sacrifice in the service of the country on the existence of which, latent in peace but manifest in war, the very existence of every government is founded. This common devotion to the service of humanity is in the political and social world what the attraction of cohesion and the attraction of gravitation are in the physical world.
We shared alike in that sacrifice and devotion and were fortunate in that we were born and reached an age when that struggle came on which allowed us to have a share in that great action, an epoch in history. We do not envy those born since, although we shall die sooner.