Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from Report of the Battle Flag Committee Appointed by the Twenty-Fourth General Assembly to Provide Cases and Transfer the Iowa Battle Flags From the Arsenal to the State Capitol, 1894
Locust street for a solid mile was full of men thinking of other days. Where were the thousands who had touched elbows in the marching line, to that same music, to those same drums, thirty years ago?
Twenty-five thousand of Iowa's soldiers are dead. Every man marching on Locust street that day thought of a comrade who once marched at his side to that tune, but who now slept in his soldier grave. Ahead of them in the line they saw the ?ags, torn and tattered, that they had borne over some rampart blazing with cannon. Then the ?ag was new, shiny and glorious. Then thev were making history, now they were memories - slowly receding to the past. The world does not wait; time does not wait; the soldiers had their day, their glory and their death. The spectators must have theirs, too. These thousands of youths lining the sidewalks are thinking of the deeds and the glory of these veterans, and they pant for deeds and glory of their own. Will they be as brave, as true, as noble, as patriotic as these who are bearing their ?ags for the last time forever? All the vast crowd are thinking of these things, and to many the spectacle before them is of spectres with their ?ags marching on to the end. In a sense they are bidding them good-bye for ever. It is the final obsequies of men who have made history. They will lay their ?ags down at the capitol, and generations will look at them and say: There are the signs of their glory, but they are gone.
The tinge of melancholy that seized on the multitudes of people almost silenced demonstration. Spite of the occasional cheers of soldiers on being handed the ?ags, spite of the drums and the bands in the procession, there was comparative silence, and a minor strain ran through every chord, touched every heart. The occasion was too great for noise; too many hearts throbbed with sad recollections, too many eyes filled with tears.
At the head of the procession rode the gray-haired Colonel Shaw, a soldier of two wars, a hero of his com mand, who rode with the blaze of musketry as coolly as now he rode to the capitol.
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