ONLY A BUTTON.
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A PAPER
READ 131-ror E.
THE MICHIGAN COMMANDERY
of THE
MILITARY ORDER

of The
LOYAL LEGION OF THE UNITED STATES
FEBRUARY 6, 1895.
By Companion
CHARLES E. FOOTE,
1st Lieut. 22nd Michigan Infantry.
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ONLY A BUTTON.
BY CHARLEs E. Foote,
Ist LIEUT. 22d MICHIGAN INFANTRY.
(Read Feb. 6, 1895)
A man, grizzled and gray, sat musing. In his hand he held
an old-time photograph, the likeness of a youth scarce twenty
years of age, standing with sword in scabbard thrown gracefully
across his arm, clad in the uniform of an officer of the United
States Infantry; a youth, proud, erect, every inch a soldier. As
the man mused he looked upon the picture, and his thoughts went
back through the misty years to the days from '61 to ’65. That
youth had then followed the flag of his country; he had seen it go
down in fire and smoke of battle, bathed in the blood of its defend-
ers, and as often gallantly raised again. He, himself, had gone
down in its defense, had lain upon the field amidst others, some
dead, some sorely wounded, where swift messengers of death sped
thickly and the storm of battle raged and surged. From that field
he had been carried to weary days, weeks and months in the hos-
pital. As the man, grizzled and gray, sat musing, his eyes lifted
to a mirror opposite, and he wondered if it were possible that the
face that he saw in the mirror could ever have been like the one
represented in the picture he held, and if it were possible that he
and that boy were the same; his eyes moistened as he thought
of those far-away days and their peril. -
What the result, and what to show for all those days of peril?
Only a Grand Army of the Republic button! And what of this
button? It stands for beardless boys, the remnants of whom are
now heavy-bearded and gray, who with youth's fondness for ex-
citement of life, looking forward to the adventures of a soldier,
filled with mingled patriotism and high anticipations of honor,
with tears left weeping mothers and happy homes to stand bravely
4
up in the swirl of battle, to rush in with the foremost in wild
charge, to receive the shock of battle as bravely as the bravest.
These boys met death with bold front and unflinching nerve. They
consecrated the nation’s flag with the sweetest, bravest blood in
all the land, dying, that from its bright folds no star should go
out, that no dishonor should stain the glory of its history.
It stands for years of young manhood given to a country’s Ser-
vice, given at the seed-time of life, when aspirations ran high,
when through the rosy dawn of that young manhood were seen
the great possibilities of life, the honor, the wealth, the power that
high and noble ambition hoped to reach, all surrendered that
“Government of the people, by the people and for the people shall
not perish from the earth.” . sº
It stands for voluntary sacrifice made by fond husbands and
loving fathers, who with last embrace drove back the tears, tore
themselves from weeping wives and clinging children, abandoned
the loving duty of home for the greater duty, obedience to a na-
tion's call in distress. Stands for wives and children surrendered
to the care of others that the nation might live. Stands for busi-
ness ambition suppressed. Stands for merchants who left their
counters, bankers who shot back the bolts of their vaults and gave
their business interests into other hands, lawyers who surrendered
their clients, all to cement by blood and sacrifice the unity of the
nation. It stands for sacrifice made by men from every avocation
of life; by men of low and men of high degree; by men whose
financial interests were small; for voluntary surrender of what
man holds most dear, homes, wives, sweethearts, sisters, brothers,
fathers, dear and weeping mothers. Ambition and hope of suc-
cess in the chosen business of life, surrendered that every star
should remain in the constellation of the nation. Stands for sons
who in bitter tears left fathers and mothers whose last support
they were, that “Old Glory” should waive undimmed throughout
this broad land. Stands for years of anxiety, years of tears and
prayers at every fireside in the land, for orphaned children, for
5.
wives made widows, and homes made desolate, that posterity
should enjoy a free and united country. -
Stands for forced marches by day and night, marches through
sunshine and marches through rain; the tramp, tramp of long and
weary columns through the heat of Southern sun, and through
the cold of Southern sleet and storm. Stands for the hasty en-
campment at night in fair weather and in foul, with shelter and
without; the startling Long Roll of the drum at midnight, the
stirring strains of the bugle calling to arms. Stands for long
lines of battle held in reserve, waiting the dread uncertainty, while
men came slowly and painfully back out of the smoke of battle
wounded and exhausted, painful reminders of what awaited a for-
ward movement. Stands for the anxious watch and strain of the
picket line, for visible and invisible dangers of the skirmish, the
ting of the rifle ball as it sails overhead, its short, sharp z-i-p, as
the enemy's firing becomes more accurate, the thud, as a comrade
by one's side is struck and sinks down, silently passing to the
great unknown; the shriek of shot and shell. Stands for the times
when every man felt that the supreme hour had come, when the
belt was tightened, when a glance down the line showed the ten-
sion and strain resting on every man, when a look from face to
face showed a whiteness about the mouth, drawn and firm-set lips,
revealed a 'glance from eye to eye that encouraged each to duty.
Stands for the sharp command that sent men into the mouth of
hell, sacrifice to a nation's honor. -
Stands for the shock of battle where death, clothed in lurid
flame and thick smoke, stalked forth in grim and awful victory,
amidst the roar of carnage, the shouts of victory, the cries of de-
feat, where the living pressed on over the fallen dead, heedless
of hurtling shot and shell, where the blood of Northern and
Southern mingled and they each gave up life in the cause for
which they struggled; where in that wild havoc of battle that in its
awful rage drove demons of the air in fear away, the hope of
fathers, the support of wives and children, laid the greatest gift
6
man has upon the altar of his country; from whence souls of brave
men took flight to meet the reward of sacrifice, went out to hear
the judgment of the Creator upon his creatures, who through suf-
fering surrendered life that the living might have more abundant
life and a more glorious freedom. Stands for all this havoc upon
havoc of battle, and more; stands for the suffering of grievously
wounded upon the battlefield, in the silent watches of the night,
with no kind hand to soothe, with none of the loved and now for-
ever lost to comfort, who upon that Southern soil, underneath the
cold light of the moon, or underneath the pitiless rain in agony
of soul, with unquenched thirst and scorching wounds, poured
out their lives in the cause of freedom for mankind. -
Stands for long and weary days of suffering in field and in
hospital from wounds and final death, for maimed and broken
bodies, health broken from exposure of camp, battlefield and
march, lives, through suffering and sacrifice rendered of little
value in the struggle for existence, to finally succumb in what
should have been the full strength of manhood; these sacred lives
gone out daily along the nation's pathway, continual reminders
of man’s sacrifice for his country.
Stands for that awful nightmare, the life of prisoners of war
incarcerated in rebel prisons, constructed for the cruel and brutal
safe-keeping of men captured in battle while defending their flag.
Men who by rules of war were entitled to honorable usuage.
Stands for that living prison death, made such by skulking cow-
ards who dare not face an armed foe, who were given the power
they held by still greater cowards, the chosen representatives of
that fraud of frauds, Southern chivalry of that date, whose sense
of honor and bravery were satisfied in starving prisoners and
heaping indignities upon men whom the fortune of war had
placed in their power. * e *.
Stands for such a degree of horror in rebel prisons that is past
the power of words to describe, that, to the terror of which the
most vivid scenes in Dante's Inferno can do no justice. Stands
7
for thousands upon thousands whose souls went out in misery
from these prison pens; for thousands upon thousands who
dragged out years of suffering to end in death, and still other
thousands who are now living broken and painful lives caused by
needless cruetlies. º .
Stands for Appomattox, where notwithstanding all these
cruelties the most liberal and gracious terms ever granted
to traitors were given, almost without the asking, as be-
came a great and noble conqueror, and black treason was let go
without further punishment, to purify itself in the ashes and de-
struction that it brought upon its own hearthstones.
It stands for a nation redeemed, a nation respected and feared
by all the earth, which, except for the wearers of this button,
had been torn asunder, despised and disgraced among nations.
Stands for more than thirty years of national progress hereto-
fore unknown in the history of the world. Stands for a great na-
tion endowed with such measure of freedom and equality among
men as no other ever possessed; a nation demanding for its pres-
ervation a pure and high order of patriotism among all of the
people. Stands for all the probabilities and possibilities of the
future that self-government makes for the good of man.
Stands for four millions of slaves made free, millions of men
given the right to own the products of their labor, millions of
women given the power to dispose of their own persons. These
millions given the right to select husbands and wives, and to call
them their very own, given the right to provide for, protect and
care for their children, without fear of the auction block and the
slave-driver's lash. By the power of wearers of this button, the
nation, granting freedom to all men who had a strain of negro
blood in their veins, was made free indeed.
By its wearers it has again been proven that this people is cap-
able of self-government, and that within all the borders of the
land, Justice, Right and Humanity must in the main prevail.
This button stands for a great and conquering army, flushed
8 *
with victory, an army inured by years of training and battle to
all the arts of war, an army that knew and felt its awful and con-
quering power; an army of citizen soldiery showing its still larger . .
measure of greatness—more than by its victories—in disbanding
without disorder and quietly melting away among the people,
grasping upon all the industries and arts of peace as though war
had never been its profession. This disbanding, this melting
away among the people, this quiet and modest assumption of
peaceful pursuits by more than one million of victorious warriors,
contrary to the predictions of all Europe, was a surprise to the
nations of the earth and furnished to the world additional evidence
of the great ability that lies in man for self-government.
And the man, grizzled and gray, said, “Yes, the button of the
Grand Army of the Republic stands for much. Stands for the
glory and power of a great people, brought triumphantly through
much tribulation to go before all the earth in the way that leads
to the complete emancipation of mankind.” *- -
And the result is worth the great cost.