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An address delivered before
R. E. Lee camp no. 1, C. V.,
Richmond, Va., January 29, 1909.
Mr. Commander and Comrades:
It was my wish that this address should be made by
Col. Rawley W. Martin, of
Lynchburg, who led the Fifty-third Virginia in
Pickett's charge, and fell by the side of
Armistead on Cemetary Ridge.
But this could not be, and so I come to take his place.
For the task assigned me I feel myself but poorly equipped.
Unlike
Col. Martin, I followed our old
Commander, as
St. Peter followed the
Master, ‘afar off.’
It is, I may say, with unfeigned diffidence that I venture to speak of war to the veteran soldiers who are here to-night.
On me, however, through your kindness, is this honor conferred, that I should present to the Camp the portrait of
Lewis A. Armistead.
I thank you for it with all my heart.
The
Armistead family, coming direct from
England, settled in
Virginia in 1636, and became ere long a family of soldiers.
Five brothers, three of them in the regular army, took part in the war of 1812.
Col. George Armistead, the oldest of the five, defended
Fort McHenry.
The flag which waved over it during the bombardment, which Key immortalized as the ‘Star Spangled Banner,’ was long guarded as a sacred heir-loom by his decendants.
It is now laid up in the National Museum.
A second
brother, Lewis Gustavus Adolphus, named for the Swedish hero, ‘The Lion of the
North,’ fell at
Fort Erie.
Walker Keith Armistead, the father of our old chief, graduated at
West Point in 1803, fought in
Canada, closed the
Seminole war, and was, when he died in 1845, second in command in the regular army.
Miss Stanley, who became his wife, was a native of the old
North State, and so it happened that
Lewis A. Armistead was born at
Newbern, N. C., in 1817.