Ohio History Journal

48       Ohio Arch. and Hist. Society Publications

represent the majesty, the dignity, the power and the

glory of this Great Republic.

 

THE GOSPEL OF BURNISHED STEEL

AN ADDRESS DELIVERED AT THE BROAD STREET PRESBY-

TERIAN CHURCH MAY 25, 1924.

Although the Honor Roll which we are dedicating

today contains names only of World War soldiers, it

is thought something should be said about the soldiers

of former wars and, perhaps, in this day of mistaken

pacificism, something about war in general.

As this service is conducted in a church, I shall speak

from a text but, not having been ordained, I will not

take it from the scriptures but from the inspiring Bat-

tle Hymn of the Republic, written by Julia Ward Howe

at the most desperate crisis of the Civil War. It is a

single line and reads thus "There is a fiery gospel writ

in burnished rows of steel." It is supplemented by an-

other line which recites that God "has loosed the fate-

ful lightnings of His terrible swift sword."  This

means (let it be said reverently here in the temple of

the Prince of Peace) that war, cruel, death-dealing and

abhorrent as it is, hath its uses and its good uses in the

hands of an overruling Providence. It means that the

Creator, in his flawless economy, purposely endowed

His image with war-waging instincts. It means that

the wrath of man has ever been the mighty engine

whereby godless and barbarous nations were leveled

one by one and better civilizations built upon their ruins.

It means that every prayer for the elevation of man-

kind has been accompanied by sacrifice upon the deep-

stained altar of Mars; and that every footstep in the

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Recent Addresses of James Edwin Campbell  49

weary march toward liberty, civil or religious, has left

its imprint in blood-soaked earth. It means that war,

when waged in defense of liberty or justice; when un-

dertaken on behalf of an oppressed or persecuted peo-

ple; when evoked in the name of humanity; or when

carried, even to foreign shores, to extirpate a blood-

thirsty military despotism  and to terminate fiendish

barbarities; is by no means an evil to be deplored or a

duty to be shunned. It means, in a word, that there are

calamities infinitely worse than war. As someone has

poetically phrased it

 

However great the carnage may be,

War, when right's defender,

Adds another gem to the diadem

Which crowns a nation's splendor.

 

Every right-minded human being yearns for that

universal peace which we are promised will come at

the dawn of the millennium; but it should be remembered

that, in the ancient day when the millennium was fore-

told, the prophecy thereof did not prevent the frequent

battle cry "To your tents Oh, Israel," uttered by God's

chosen people as they numbered and renumbered their

warriors and sent them forth to put the heathen to the

sword.  It did not prevent Cromwell's God-fearing

Ironsides, while they were praying and psalm-singing

all over Europe, from smiting their enemies hip and

thigh. When Ethan Allen demanded the surrender of

Fort Ticonderoga "in the name of the Great Jehovah

and the Continental Congress" there was no blasphemy

in coupling their names. You cannot gild with any fig-

ure of speech the forceful words of that hero in the

Civil War who wired "Hold the fort for I am coming"

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50       Ohio Arch. and list. Society Publications

which were appropriately made the refrain of one of

the most effective hymns ever written; nor could any-

thing add pathos or dignity to the reply of a pious Ohio

colonel who, when asked if he could hold the line at

Chickamauga in the midst of a most desperate attack,

replied "I will hold it or go to Heaven from it."

It is a sad fact that the millennium, which we hoped

had come at the end of the World War, is yet far

away. More men are under arms today than when

that wicked war began. Here, in the twentieth century,

no theme stirs the human heart like that of siege and

battle. Civilized man cannot recall the time when the

stirring tales of war were not told or retold. In the

rude days of tradition, legends of martial lore, re-

hearsed by patriarch or chanted by bard, captivated and

incited the untutored heart. Written history has pre-

served in more enduring form the later exploits of man;

yet its almost unvaried task has been to embalm for

posterity the chronicles of mortal combat. On each of

its pages are emblazoned the nodding plume and flut-

tering banner. Each chapter depicts the shock of con-

tending armies. Each volume is but an epitome of war.

The soldier is still enthroned as an unchallenged hero.

Ballads recounting deeds of arms are yet crooned over

the cradle; the drum and trumpet have not ceased to

be the coveted toys of childhood; youth is thrilled by

bewitching story of march and battle; manhood pays

eager homage to military fame.

The history of our own country shows that, in every

crisis, the old beaten path has been followed and the

belligerent instinct of man was evoked to work out the

beneficent purpose of God. First came the War for

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Recent Addresses of James Edwin Campbell  51

Independence. The Fathers, few in number and weak

in equipment, but armed with a just cause, went man-

fully to war and conquered the most powerful nation on

earth. Was not God upholding the hands of Washing-

ton, Greene, Wayne, Franklin, Adams, Hamilton and

Jefferson and that incomparable band of their fellow-

patriots who created this free republic? Again, in

1812, when Great Britain impressed our seamen and

scornfully defied us, we were compelled to fight for our

honor and our rights. We swept from the high seas

the commerce of that country which had been their un-

disputed mistress for a century; and, at New Orleans,

our backwoods riflemen exterminated an army com-

posed of Wellington's picked veterans. Our loss was

thirteen and their's twenty-six hundred -- the most bit-

ter defeat inflicted in the wars of all the ages. Did that

look as if God had rebuked us for bringing on the war?

When the unspeakable Spaniard had established a de-

cadent despotism at our very door and every instinct

of decency and self-respect demanded that we should

abolish it; when he blew up one of our ships anchored

in his supposedly friendly harbor; could we do less than

go to war? If God was not with us why did he permit

us to establish security and home rule in Cuba and put

an end to a three-hundred year war in the Philippines?

When in 1861 Providence, watching over us, decided

that the time had come to wipe out the stain of African

slavery and root up the heresy of secession, again it

was war -- a war between brethren whereby the politi-

cal sins of the people were cleansed in a sea of blood

under whose turbulent waves were engulfed the twin

perils which had menaced the unity and perpetuity of

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52       Ohio Arch. and Hist. Society Publications

our institutions; and, in the immortal words of Abra-

ham Lincoln "Government of the people, by the people

and for the people shall not perish from the earth."

But a very small proportion of this audience can re-

member the Civil War or comprehend its magnitude --

its terrific drain on human life. To illustrate: Ohio,

with less than forty per cent of its present population,

emblazoned 313,000 names on the Muster Roll of the

Union. Proportionately, today she would have to fur-

nish 770,000 and the quota of Franklin County would

be 40,000. If the losses in killed and wounded were

proportioned to those of the Civil War Ohio's share

would be 63,000 and that of Franklin County 3,000. It

is when our thoughts turn to the frightful bloodshed of

the four long and tragic years of Civil War that our

emotions seem ready to choke our utterance. Today

there lie in the graveyards of our country more than

two million Union veterans; we know where they are

but where are the thousands upon thousands of un-

known dead whose resting place no human eye can

see? They are everywhere -- in the mountain gorges

of the Blue Ridge; on the fertile plains of the cotton

belt; under the deadly swamps of the Carolinas; and

amidst the dense thickets of the Wilderness. Their

bones are heaped in trenches where the leaden hail fell

thickest, and bleach unknown in prison pens, where

ghastly famine stalked. The turbulent waves of the

Atlantic and the tepid waters of the Gulf flow over the

sunken iron ships, coffined in which they lie. The gen-

tle breezes rustle unheeded through the shadowy woods,

and the wild birds warble their silvery notes, while be-

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Recent Addresses of James Edwin Campbell    53

neath rest those whom we call "The Dead"; but they

are not dead.

 

And dare ye call that dying? The dignity sublime,

Which gains a furlough from the grave, and then reports to time?

Doth the earth give up the daisies to a little sun and rain,

And keep at their roots the heroes while weary ages wane?

Sling up thy trumpet Israel? Sweet bugler of our God,

For nothing waits thy summons beneath this broken sod,

The deadest of these heroes has as silently rent the clod,

As the clouds burst into flower when the sun rides over the bar,

Or heaven breaks out of the blue, and comes out star by star;

They march abreast of the ages, with the thunder on the right,

For they bade that world "Good morning," when this world said

"Good night".

 

CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL

DELIVERED SEPTEMBER 15, 1922

A few weeks ago The Ohio State Journal sent me a

questionnaire containing a number of interrogatories.

One of them read as follows: Who is your favorite

heroine? I took time for due consideration. I passed

over the ancient queens, such as Zenobia and Semiramis,

who had established dynasties; I could not find a place

for Isabella who, of all the sovereigns of Europe, had

the nerve and vision to finance the discovery of the New

World; I even let Joan of Arc go by; I did not write

down the name of Elizabeth, that heroic queen who, de-

spite some feminine foibles, was the greatest ruler of

England in three hundred years; I could not find a

place for Maria Theresa, although she, alone in all the

world, threw down the gauntlet to that masterful and

typical Prussian, Frederick the Great; I omitted Ma-

dame Roland and the other heroines of the French Rev-

olution; I did not select one of the semi-inspired women

immortalized by the Bible, or one of the good women

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