Thread by @WVPitt

Afternoon reading

A reminder of how young a nation we are in Gildersleeve writes in the year my grandma was born about CW veterans, "Twenty-five years hence, when the survivors will be curiosities, as were Revolutionary pensioners in my childhood..."

Basil points out in 1921 he knew Rev War vets.

Something Gildersleeve touches on in this essay is how many of the chief leaders & soldiers of the South were against Secession, even openly so during the War, yet gladly and willingly, "died upholding a right which was not a right to him" because of their understanding of duty.

"...Vermont went wild, the other day, over Bennington as she did not over the centenary of the surrender at Yorktown, Take away this local patriotism and you take out all the color that Is left in American life." -- Basil Gildersleeve with some keen words.

"Too much tragedy and too much idyl have been Imported into the home life of the Southern people ; but this is not the place to reduce poetry to prose." -- Gildersleeve

"That the cause we fought for and our brothers died for was the cause of civil liberty, and not the cause of human slavery, is a thesis which we feel ourselves bound to maintain whenever our motives are challenged or misunderstood, If only for our children's sake." -- Basil

"History is philosophy teaching by examples." -- Basil Gildersleeve

This is still true today in 2021 Mr. Gildersleeve. 😁

"Kentucky and Ohio frown at each other across the river. Cincinnati looks down on Covington, and Covington glares at Cincinnati."

"Brasldas was in some respects like Stonewall Jackson, but Brasldas was not a Presbyterian elder, nor Stonewall Jackson a cajoling diplomatist." -- Basil Gildersleeve

"Nostalgia, which we are apt to sneer at as a doctor's name for homesickness, was a power for evil in those days, and some of our finest troops were thinned out by it, notoriously the North Carolinians, whose attachment to the soil of their State was as passionate as any Greek".

Reminisces are some of my favorite writing, especially as a mature man looks back at youthful exploits. This book is chief among them. /end