Nobler men than they never died for any cause.
For the most part they were simple-minded, honest-hearted boys; the sterling products of our Northern home-life, and Northern Common Schools, and that grand stalwart Northern blood, the yeoman blood of sturdy middle class freemen--the blood of the race which has conquered on every field since the Roman Empire went down under its sinewy blows.

They prated little of honor, and knew nothing of "chivalry" except in its repulsive travesty in the South.

As citizens at home, no honest labor had been regarded by them as too humble to be followed with manly pride in its success; as soldiers in the field, they did their duty with a calm defiance of danger and death, that the world has not seen equaled in the six thousand years that men have followed the trade of war.

In the prison their conduct was marked by the same unostentatious but unflinching heroism.

Death stared them in the face constantly.