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| The final act of the drama: the last Confederate prisoners take the oath at city Point. This is the finale, the last tableau of the Great Drama of the Civil War — a drama that for four years had held the stage of half a continent with all civilization for an audience. In late April of 1865 a photographer visited City Point Prison, Maryland, and was present when the last Confederate prisoners took the oath of allegiance to the flag under whose shadow they stand as their hands touch simultaneously the Bibles--one held by each group of four. At the desk, administering the oath, sits the Commander of the Department of St. Mary's, General James Barnes, who since recovering from his wounds at Gettysburg had been in charge of more captured Confederates than there were in Lee's last army. It is a moving sight; it stirs the emotions, to look at the faces of these men, now returning from exile to their war-ridden country and desolated homes. Theirs is the hardest task in all the world — to conquer defeat and begin anew, under changed surroundings and conditions, the struggle for existence. Bravely the Southerners faced it, as bravely as they had faced the line of blue-clad men who are their enemies no longer. Long before fifty years had passed, when again the war cloud had risen and the country called for men, during the Spanish War, in the great camps at Chickamauga--“the sons of those sires, at the same camp-fires, cheered one flag where their fathers fought.” |
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[350]
Review of Reviews. New York. 1912.
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