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- Mar 18, 2011
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- Clinton, Mississippi
I found this great little article recently, and wanted to share:
The Old Grey Coat
We frequently see upon our streets shattered and emaciated forms wearing upon their persons, threadbare, tattered and faded coats of grey. Buttons and lace are gone, and the old garments are but typical of their country's sad and desolate condition. To us there is something inexpressibly touching in these relics of by gone days. They speak of a past that will live in song and story through ages yet to come; they speak of the thunderstorm of battle; the 'watchfire's glimmering light;' the cold and deadly trenches. They tell of dangers, hardships and deprivations; they tell of matchless valor, of laurels won in face to face combat with death; and above all, they remind us of those who left us in the bloom and flush of youth, and whose farewells were eternal.
But in many a homestead, the grey coat is guarded and kept as a precious heirloom. Tattered and torn; with red stain to tell where a life has ebbed away; it is treasured as a sole memorial of one who yielded up himself a willing sacrifice upon the altar of his country. Then pass not the wearer of the grey coat unheeded by. That garb invests him with a claim upon the sympathy of every true Southern host. He may be poor and destitute, far away from home and friends. But he is one of us; one, perchance, who followed the cross as it moved through the tangled depths of the Wilderness or was borne towards the frowning batteries of Gettysburg; stood under it on Shiloh's bloody plain or by Chickamauga's stream of death. Give him then the hand of fellowship, and for the sake of the honored grey, greet him with a comrade's hearty welcome.
- The Vicksburg Sunday Times, December 23, 1866
The Old Grey Coat
We frequently see upon our streets shattered and emaciated forms wearing upon their persons, threadbare, tattered and faded coats of grey. Buttons and lace are gone, and the old garments are but typical of their country's sad and desolate condition. To us there is something inexpressibly touching in these relics of by gone days. They speak of a past that will live in song and story through ages yet to come; they speak of the thunderstorm of battle; the 'watchfire's glimmering light;' the cold and deadly trenches. They tell of dangers, hardships and deprivations; they tell of matchless valor, of laurels won in face to face combat with death; and above all, they remind us of those who left us in the bloom and flush of youth, and whose farewells were eternal.
But in many a homestead, the grey coat is guarded and kept as a precious heirloom. Tattered and torn; with red stain to tell where a life has ebbed away; it is treasured as a sole memorial of one who yielded up himself a willing sacrifice upon the altar of his country. Then pass not the wearer of the grey coat unheeded by. That garb invests him with a claim upon the sympathy of every true Southern host. He may be poor and destitute, far away from home and friends. But he is one of us; one, perchance, who followed the cross as it moved through the tangled depths of the Wilderness or was borne towards the frowning batteries of Gettysburg; stood under it on Shiloh's bloody plain or by Chickamauga's stream of death. Give him then the hand of fellowship, and for the sake of the honored grey, greet him with a comrade's hearty welcome.
- The Vicksburg Sunday Times, December 23, 1866
Bringing the