Southern Historical Society Papers, Volume 18.
Reverend J. William Jones, Ed.

[275]

We adopt the sentiment and language of Pericles in the celebrated oration over the dead who perished in the first campaign of the Peloponnesian war, delivered four hundred and thirty years before the birth of the author of the sweet Galilean vision:

But of these men there was none that either was made a coward by his wealth, from preferring the continued enjoyment of it; or shrank from danger through a hope suggested by poverty—namely, that he might yet escape it, and grow rich; but conceiving that vengence on their foes was more to be desired than these objects, and at the same time regarding this as the most glorious of hazards, they wished by risking it to be avenged on their enemies, and so to aim at procuring those advantages; committing to hope the uncertainty of success, but resolving to trust to action with regard to what was visible to themselves; and in that action, being minded rather to resist than die, than by surrendering to escape, they fled from the shame of a discreditable report, while they endured the brunt of the battle with their bodies; and after the shortest crisis, when at the very height of their fortune, were taken away from their glory rather than their fear.

Such did these men prove themselves as became the character of their country. I would not have you unmindful that the angel of death left his mark on other households than ours. Funeral insignia hang thick on the homes of the conquerors. The memory of their dead is cherished by the Government; their orphaned young, their widowed wives, their disabled survivors, are generously maintained at public expense. Our dead have no country except the unmarked empire of eternity; no flag except the weird cross borne at the head of the spectre host in the spirit land. Departed spirits of our expatriated dead, we salute you on the slopes of glory! ‘Lo! at their tomb my tributary tears I offer for my brethren's obsequies!’