...e to offer the tribute of gratitude to the men, dead and living, who followed the fortunes of the Confederacy from the outbreak of the war until Palm Sunday in 1865, when the ragged regiments of the South , torn by hostile shot and shell, stacked their guns, lowered their banners, and, broken-hearted, dispersed, to find ruined homes and a country girded with sackcloth and sprinkled with ashes. This m...