Ramsey Milholland. Booth Tarkington
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“What for?”
“To keep from getting killed, or maybe to keep from getting captured.”
“But the Rebels were bad men, weren't they, Grandpa?”
“No.”
The boy's forehead, customarily vacant, showed some little vertical shadows, produced by a struggle to think. “Well, but—” he began, slowly. “Listen, Grandpa, listen here!”
“Well?”
“Listen! Well, you said—you said you never got scared the ole Rebels were goin' to win.”
“They did win pretty often,” said the grandfather. “They won a good many battles.”
“I mean, you said you never got scared they'd win the war.”
“No, we were never afraid of that.”
“Well, but if they were good men and fought like wildcats, Grandpa, and kep' winning battles and everything, how could that be? How could you help bein' scared they'd win the war?”
The grandfather's feeble eyes twinkled brightly. “Why, we knew they couldn't, Ramsey.”
At this, the little vertical shadows on Ramsey's forehead became more pronounced, for he had succeeded in thinking. “Well, they didn't know they couldn't, did they?” he argued. “They thought they were goin' to win, didn't they?”
“Yes, I guess they did. Up till toward the last, I suppose they probably did. But you see they were wrong.”
“Well, but—” Ramsey struggled. “Listen! Listen here, Grandpa! Well, anyway, if they never got scared we'd win, and nobody got scared they'd win—well, I don't see—”
“You don't see what?”
But Ramsey found himself unable to continue his concentration; he slumped down upon the small of his back, and his brow relaxed to its more comfortable placidity, while his eyes wandered with a new butterfly fluttering over the irises that bordered the iron picket fence at the south side of the yard. “Oh, nothin' much,” he murmured.
“I see.” And his grandfather laughed again. “You mean: If the Rebels felt just as sure of winning the war as we did, and kept winning battles why shouldn't we ever have had any doubts that we were going to win? That's it, isn't it?”
“I guess so, Grandpa.”
“Well, I think it was mostly because we were certain that we were right.”
“I see,” said Ramsey. “The Rebels knew they were on the side of the Devil.” But at this, the grandfather's laugh was louder than it had been before, and Ramsey looked hurt. “Well, you can laugh if you want to!” he objected in an aggrieved voice. “Anyway, the Sunday-school sup'intendent told us when people knew they were on the Devil's side they always—”
“I dare say, I dare say,” the old man interrupted, a little impatiently. “But in this world mighty few people think they're on the Devil's side, Ramsey. There was a Frenchman once, in olden times; he said people were crazy because, though they couldn't even make worms, they believed they could make gods. And so whenever countries or parts of a country get into a war, each side makes a god and a devil, and says: 'God's on our side and the Devil's on the other.' The South thought the Devil was on our side, you see.”
“Well, that kind o' mixes it all up more'n ever.”
“Yes, it seems so; but Abraham Lincoln wasn't mixed up about it. When some people told him that God was on our side, he said the important thing was to find out if we were on God's side. That was the whole question, you see; because either side could make up a god, the kind of a god they liked and wanted; and then they'd believe in him, too, and fight for him—but if he was only a made-up god they'd lose. President Lincoln didn't want to have a made-up god on his side; he wanted to find God Himself and find out what he wanted, and then do it. And that's what Lincoln did.”
“Well, I don't understand much of all that!”
“No? Then suppose you look at it this way: The South was fighting for what it believed to be its rights, but we weren't fighting for our rights; we were fighting for the right. The South was fighting for what it believed to be its right to split the Union and be a country by itself; but we were fighting for 'Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable.' It wasn't only the Union we fought for; it was Freedom. The South wanted freedom to leave the Union; but the reason the South wanted that freedom to separate from us was because we wanted the Freedom of Man. There's the reason we had the certain knowledge that we were going to win the war. How plain and simple it is!”
Ramsey didn't think so. He had begun to feel bored by the conversation, and to undergo the oppression he usually suffered in school; yet he took a little interest in the inexplicable increase of fervour with which his grandfather spoke, and in a shoot of sunshine which somehow got through the foliage of the walnut tree and made a bedazzlement of glinting fine lines in one spot, about the size of a saucer, upon the old man's head of thick white hair. Half closing his eyes, drowsily, Ramsey played that this sunshine spot was a white bird's-nest and, and he had a momentary half dream of a glittering little bird that dwelt there and wore a blue soldier cap on its head. The earnest old voice of the veteran was only a sound in the boy's ears.
“Yes, it's simple and plain enough now, though then we didn't often think of it in exactly this way, but just went on fighting and never doubted. We knew the struggle and suffering of our fathers and grandfathers to make a great country here for Freedom, and we knew that all this wasn't just the whim of a foolish god, willing to waste such great things—we knew that such a country couldn't have been building up just to be wasted. But, more than that, we knew that armies fighting for the Freedom of Man had to win, in the long run, over armies that fought for what they considered their rights.
“We didn't set out to free the slaves, so far as we knew. Yet our being against slavery was what made the war, and we had the consciousness that we were on the side of God's plan, because His plan is clearly the Freedom of Man. Long ago we began to see the hints of His plan—a little like the way you can see what's coming in August from what happens in April, but man has to win his freedom from himself—men in the light have to fight against men in the dark of their own shadow. That light is the answer; we had the light that made us never doubt. Ours was the true light, and so we—”
“Boom—” The veterans had begun to fire their cannon on the crest of the low hill, out at the cemetery; and from a little way down the street came the rat-a-tat of a toy drum and sounds of a fife played execrably. A file of children in cocked hats made of newspapers came marching importantly up the sidewalk under the maple shade trees; and in advance, upon a velocipede, rode a tin-sworded personage, shrieking incessant commands but not concerning himself with whether or not any military obedience was thereby obtained. Here was a revivifying effect upon young Ramsey; his sluggard eyelids opened electrically; he leaped to his feet and, abandoning his grandfather without preface or apology, sped across the lawn and out of the gate, charging headlong upon the commander of the company.
“You get off that 'locipede, Wesley Bender!” he bellowed. “You gimme that sword! What rights you got to go bein' captain o' my army, I'd like to know! Who got up this army, in the first place, I'd like to know! I did, myself yesterd'y afternoon, and you get back in line or I won't let you b'long to it at all!”
The pretender succumbed; he instantly dismounted, being out-shouted and overawed. On foot he took his place in the ranks, while Ramsey became sternly vociferous. “In-tention, company! Farwud march! Col-lumn right! Right-showdler harms! Halt! Far-wud march. Carry harms—”
The Army went trudging away under the continuous but unheeded fire of orders, and presently disappeared round a corner, leaving the veteran chuckling feebly under his walnut tree and alone with the empty street. All trace of what he had said seemed to have been wiped from the grandson's mind; but memory has curious