Reply #16: Thanks for sharing this...

[TuxedoKat]

Your post reminded me of something I read in a book last year from a set of volumes published 50 years after the ending of the Civil War in 1912 (The Photographic History of The Civil War In Ten Volumes (Volume Three, The Decisive Battles, p. 61). It made such an impression on me because when I read this I realized that this was only two years before WWI started. Anyway, here is the text of what the author, James Barnes, wrote to accompany a picture of fallen soldiers:

The Ones Who Never Came Back

"These are some of the men for whom waiting women wept--the ones who never came back. They belonged to Ewell's Corps, who attacked the Federal lines so gallantly on May 18th. There may be some who will turn from this picture with a shudder of horror, but it is no morbid curiosity that will cause them to study it closely. If pictures such as this were familiar everywhere there would soon be an end of war. We can realize money by seeing it expressed in figures; we can realize distances by miles, but some things in their true meaning can only be grasped and impressions formed with the seeing eye. Visualizing only this small item of the awful cost--the cost beside which money cuts no figure--an idea can be gained of what war is. Here is a sermon in the cause of universal peace. The handsome lad lying with outstretched arms and clenched fingers is a mute plea. Death has not disfigured him--he lies in an attitude of relaxation and composure. Perhaps in some Southern home this same face is pictured in the old family album, alert and full of life and hope, and here is the end. Does there not come to the mind the insistent question, "Why?" The Federal soldiers standing in the picture are not thinking of all this, it may be true, but had they meditated in the way that some may, as they gaze at this record of death, it would be worth their while. One of the men is apparently holding a sprig of blossoms in his hand. It it a strange note here."