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SALUTE OF HONOR
by Mort Kunstler
Overall Print Size: 23;" x 29;"
Edition Size: 1150
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They faced each other in two long straight lines - just as they had so many times before on so many bloody fields of fire. This time was different. Three days earlier, General Robert E. Lee had surrendered the skeletal remnants of his hard-fighting Army of Northern Virginia to General Ulysses S. Grant in farmer Wilmer McLean's parlor. Now it was time for the Sons of the South to lay down their arms and give up their bloodied battle flags. As enemies, these men in blue and gray had faced each other at Petersburg and Cold Harbor, at Gettysburg and Chancellorsville, at Fredericksburg and Antietam, at Second Manassas and Malvern Hill. Now they again stood in great ranks opposite each other - one now the victor, the other now the vanquished.
Placed in command of receiving the Southern surrender was Brigadier General Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, a Northern war hero who bore four battle wounds inflicted by these men in gray and butternut now assembled before him. Absent in Chamberlain, however, was any animosity toward these former foes; present instead was a sense of respect for fellow countrymen who had given their all in the grip of war. At Chamberlain's order, there was no jeering. No beating of drums, no chorus of cheers or other unseemly celebration in the face of a fallen foe. "Before us in proud humiliation," Chamberlain would later recall, "stood the embodiment of manhood: men whom neither toils and sufferings, nor the fact of death, nor disaster, nor hopelessness could bend from their resolve; standing before us now, thin, worn, and famished, but erect, and with eyes looking level into ours, waking memories that bound us together as no other bond. Was not such manhood to be welcomed back into a Union so tested and assured?"
At Chamberlain's command, the Northern troops receiving the surrender shifted their weapons to "carry arms" - a soldier's salute, delivered in respect to the defeated Southerners standing before them. Confederate General John B. Gordon immediately recognized this remarkable, generous gesture offered by fellow Americans - and responded with a like salute. Honor answering honor. Then it was over. And a new day had begun - built on this salute of honor at Appomattox. Former foes both North and South - in mutual respect and mutual toleration - now faced the future together - as Americans all.
> It is April 12, 1965 at Appomattox Court House, Virginia. In "SALUTE OF HONOR" we see Brigadier General Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain in front of his Northern troops as they salute their honorable enemies, who were now former foes. It is a gracious gesture will help establish the spirit of reconciliation to reunite the North and the South as one nation. Chamberlain describes the emotional scene: "As each successive division masks our own, it halts, the men face inward towards us across the road, twelve feet away; then carefully 'dress' their line, each captain taking pains for the good appearance of his company, worn and half-starved as they were. The field and staff take their positions in the intervals of regiments, generals in rear of their commands. They fix bayonets, stack arms; then, hesitatingly, remove cartridge-boxes and lay them down. Lastly - reluctantly, with agony of expression - they tenderly fold their flags, battle-worn and torn, blood-stained, heart-holding colors, and lay them down; some frenziedly rushing from the ranks, kneeling over them, clinging to them, pressing them to their lips with burning tears. And only the Flag of the Union greets the sky!"
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