Significance of the memorial.
What does the
Howitzer Monument mean?
What does it stand for?
It means more than that this one fell under his gun never to rise again, or that one will go to his grave a physical wreck.
It stands for more than physical courage.
It means also that the survivors were among the rebuilders of the devastated
South.
It stands also for a moral courage that could rise superior to any adversity.
In the crowd of veterans that assembled in the Theatre yesterday were hundreds who, when the war closed, were absolutely penniless, but whose energy, enterprise, self-denial, and patience constitute the foundation stones upon which the present prosperity of
Richmond and
Virginia is reared.
These, no less than the gallant youths who offered up their lives amid the rush and smoke of battle, and whose memory will never fade from the
Southern heart, are typified in ‘No 1 in position and out,’ but ready for whatever may betide.
The figure stands for the spirit of the
South—not only the spirit that was invincible in war, but the spirit that defied being broken or humiliated in peace.
