[270] to duty. Indeed, in the conscientious discharge of that duty he died upon the field of Shiloh in a moment of victory, when I firmly believe had he lived but half an hour longer, Grant would have been a prisoner. I loved him so that I dare not trust myself to speak of him as my heart would prompt me. As I have said on another occasion, when he came to us it appeared to me that a great pillar had been put under the Confederacy; and when he fell on the field of Shiloh, that ruin stared before us. You have heard how he was left without a command in Mexico; and yet General Zachary Taylor, the best judge of human nature I ever saw, said that Albert Sidney Johnston had more sterling qualities than any officer he knew. I know not why it was; but I suppose that in those days, as in these, men were taken not so much for their capacity as for their position in some political organization. I do not know how we shall ever correct that; the civil service reform, I am afraid, will not do it. I will not detain you, my friends. 1 am sure there is nothing I could say to you that you do not feel or know of the great man whom you have assembled here to-day to honor. Thanks be to your generous natures, that bring you annually to decorate the graves of the Confederate dead, that has caused you to erect two monuments to two great Confederate leaders. And now you are about to erect a third. Very few eras of history have been marked by great soldiers. It is seldom that a generation produces one; but I think I may defy criticism when I say that the Confederacy had three great soldiers—three who would compare with the greatest soldiers of ancient or modern times. Struggling as they were without the proper means of carrying on the war —fighting, I may say, the whole world without arms—when the history of it all shall be truly written it will show the greatest record of human resistance, of the power of intellect to combat matter, that the world has ever seen.
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Richmond, VA. 1883.
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