Southern Historical Society Papers, Volume 11.
Reverend J. William Jones, Ed.

Editorial paragraph.

General Geo. D. Johnston, after a splendid campaign in Mississippi, goes now to Arkansas in the interests of our Society, looking after ‘Permanent Endowment’ as well as annual subscriptions. If this gallant soldier, accomplished gentleman, and ‘Prince of Agents’ needed any commendation from us there is very much we could say. But to friends among whom he may go we will only say: ‘Hear him for his cause,’ and help him as you love the name and fame of our Confederate soldiers and people.

our General index to first ten volumes of Southern Histori-Cal Society Papers, which we published in our December number, cost us a good deal of labor, and considerable extra expense for the printing; but we are sure our readers will appreciate it as a very important addition to the value of our volumes. A glance at it will show the invaluable work which the Society has already done, and will indicate the great work which yet remains to be accomplished.

We intended it as a New Year's offering to our subscribers, and an earnest of what we have in store for them in future—always providing they do not forget the little matter of sending us their renewal fees.

General Fitz. Lee's Southern tour, and the splendid ovation which he received has excited general attention and interest, and invitations for him to repeat the lecture are pouring in from every quarter.

We could write many pages more of the details of our charming trip, but we find our space this month, as last, too crowded for us to do more than give a bare summary of what it would be very pleasant to write out fully. [45]

Our visit to Savannah is fragrant with many hallowed memories, for, besides the lavish hospitality with which we were treated, there are few places in the country which so teem with historic associations as the beautiful ‘Forrest city.’

Captain A. A. Winn, who had been very active in inviting General Lee to Savannah, called a meeting, to arrange for his visit, and at this meeting the following committee was appointed:

Henry R. Jackson, A. R. Lawton, Robert H. Anderson, John Screven, G. M. Sorrel, T. F. Screven, H. M. Branch, Peter Reilly, B. H. Richardson, David Waldhauer, George P. Walker, C. C. Hardwicke, J. F. Brooks, J. H. Estill, R. P. Myers, M. D., James L. Taylor, Charles H. Olmstead, Geo. W. Alley, C. H. Morel, W. S. Bogart, G. M. Ryals, A. H. Lane, Rufus E. Lester, W. S. Basinger, J. B. Read, M. D., Joel Kennard, A. McC. Duncan, E. P. Alexander, John F. Wheaton, LaFayette McLaws, Henry C. Wayne, George A. Mercer, John Schwarz, W. W. Gordon, Fred. M. Hull, A. A. Winn, H. M. Comer, T. B. Chisholm, W. G. Waller, John Talliaferro, J. D. Johnston, T. S. Wayne, C. L. Chestnut, John Flannery, Daniel Lahey, D. G. Purse, Wm. Duncan, C. W. Anderson, R. G. Gaillard, J. F. Gilmer, Cormack Hopkins, J. G. Thomas, M. D., C. C. Schley, M. D., Julian Myers, E. M. Anderson.

The committee had arranged a brilliant reception of General Lee at the depot—an open barouche drawn by four beautiful grays, a turnout of the military, etc.—but ‘the cavalry flanked them’ by arriving some hours ahead of the appointed time and quietly finding at the Pulaski House the elegant rooms which the Messrs. Goodsell had set apart as our quarters. But the committee and other friends were not long in ascertaining that we had ‘stolen a march on them,’ and we were soon ‘surrounded and captured’ by genial, courteous gentlemen who left no wish unattended to during our stay, and no effort unspared to make our visit a continued pleasure. Our drives, and walks (when we could steal off from the carriages which were in constant attendance), about the city and its beautiful suburbs—our visit to the Georgia Historical Society, the cemeteries, monuments, wharves, parks, cotton presses, &c., &c.—were rendered the more delightful by congenial company.

We have asked a competent hand to write us, for future publication, some sketches of points of historic interest about Savannah, and we cannot further allude to them now than to say that we were particularly struck with the superb bronze statue of the Confederate soldier on the Confederate monument, (the generous gift of the late G. W. J. DeRenne, Esq.）—the beautiful Pulaski monument, one of the finest in the world,—‘Hodgson Hall,’ the Library of the Georgia Historical Society, which was the gift of Mrs. Telfair Hodgson as a memorial to her husband—and other points which we cannot now even mention. [By the way what more appropriate and beautiful monument to a deceased loved one can be erected than a Historical Society building? And is there not one somewhere who desires thus to connect the name of some loved one with a building for the Southern Historical Society?]

As we said in our last, General Lee's lecture at the Savannah theatre was [46] a splendid success. The brilliant audience—the eloquent introduction of Capt. Geo. A. Mercer,—the presence on the platform of General Lafayette McLaws, General E. P. Alexander, Mayor John F. Wheaton, Judge William D. Harden, General G. M. Sorrel, General R. H. Anderson, Colonel Chas. H. Olmstead, Major G. M. Ryals, Colonel Rufus E. Lester, Major A. A. Winn, Major Lachlan McIntosh, Dr. Wm. Charters, W. S. Bogart, Esq., and R. J. Larcombe, Esq.—and the enthusiastic and oft-repeated applause with which General Lee was greeted—all combined to make the scene an inspiring and long-to-be-remembered one, and fully justified the Morning News in saying that ‘the audience was thoroughly delighted, entertained, interested, and instructed by one of the most pleasing and graphic lectures ever delivered.’

The ‘Reception’ at the City Hall, presided over by his Honor, Mayor Wheaton, (to whom we were indebted for many courtesies, none the less gracefully tendered, and cordially received, because he was a gallant Confederate soldier,) was a very pleasant affair.

The banquet of the Chatham Artillery (of whose armory and grand old history we will have much to say hereafter), was a magnificent affair in all of its details, from the beautiful carriage, and four spanking bays, which conveyed us to and from the armory to the last greetings in the ‘wee smaa hours,’ as the company rose, and with clasped hands, sang ‘Auld Lang Syne.’

Admirable speeches were made, in response to toasts, by General Lee, General A. R. Lawton, Corporal Walter G. Charlton, Captain Geo. A. Mercer, Colonel Clifford W. Anderson, Major B. J. Burgess, General McLaws, Sergeant J. R. Saussy, Major J. G. Ryals, General R. H. Anderson, Judge Harden, and others. But as a specimen of the spirit of the occasion we give in full the following eloquent response of W. S. Bogart, Esq., to the call made on him:

Gentlemen of the Chatham Artillery:—It has been my pleasure many times before to share in your entertainments, and as an honorary member retired from active service to enjoy your festivities, and to recall, so far as memory can, the pleasures and the pride of former days. But none of these happy occasions do I remember with more satisfaction, or with a greater sense of the fitness of things, than the present one, when we are recalling the memories of the past in the suggestive presence of one who has illustrated them so well. The surviving heroes of our patriotic struggles are few enough, and are yearly becoming fewer. Let me congratulate you then that you have in your hall to-night one of these gallant survivors as your welcome guest. Personally he may, until this visit, have been a stranger to most of us, but his name and his military life have been for years familiar with us all. He bears the cognomen of that noble hero, whose nephew he is, and whose fame is immortal. It will never be, or if it shall, not until memory and gratitude are both forgotten, that there shall be lacking in Savannah a welcome to a Lee of that Virginia stock, which gave us the ‘patriot [47] brothers’ of the first Revolution, their great cousin, ‘Harry Lee of the Legion,’ and his greater son — in the Chevalier, ‘sans peur et sans reproche’—our second Washington. The knightly graces of this household, and the golden honors it has won in a century and a half will never be forgotten, but reproduced, as they have been, in each generation, and coupled with the personal merits of each individual inheritor, the law of ‘noblesse oblige’ will ever preserve them. For gallantry in war, for manliness in peace, for faithfulness to principle, for eloquent vindication of patriotic motives, and for patient sufferance, yet with hearty indignation of wrong to his native State, from foes without and from traitors within, our distinguished guest is a worthy scion of the old stock.

Nor is it without a certain sense of fitness that the grandson of Washington's favorite cavalry officer, and the nephew of him whom we love even more than Washington—because he had Washington's virtues, and was nearer to us in years — should be your guest to-night. Both of these Southern heroes have, each in his own day, visited Savannah, have seen your battery in line, have complimented its personnel and its ‘dextrous’ drill, and have shared the greetings of the oldest artillery corps of the South, now close approaching its Centennial anniversary. Fitting, then, it is, that this honored military body, representing in the past its founders in almost Revolutionary days (for its first service was to bury in yonder cemetery General Nathaniel Greene), and in the present, its gallant Captain and brave canoneers, in the sufferings and trials of our four years civil war, should pay this tribute of hospitality to one who is so closely connected, by alliance or by blood, with these noblest Americans, and who, by his own brilliant deeds, illustrates so well the heritage he has received.

This distinguished soldier and his reverend friend, equally welcomed here—himself no untried specimen of a soldier, who followed the camp from Manassas to Appomattox—visit Savannah on a mission of high purpose and value. Having helped to make history in troublous days, they come to induce us to help preserve and perpetuate it. The gathering and the publishing the records of the war are the essential justification of our cause, and on these depend the honor, the patriotism and the right of our people in history. These records, then, become the weapons with which we are to fight over again, before the forum of the world's judgment, the great war of secession and independence. In that contest the Southern mind and the Southern tongue and pen will not be less brilliant but more successful than than the Southern heart and the Southern sword. Let us do what we can to help this great purpose and end.

Fellow citizens and guests, I offer you the name and fame of Fitzhugh Lee, the worthy comrade in the saddle of Stuart and of Hampton, and the good deeds of J. William Jones, the Chaplain of ‘The Boys in Gray,’ whose life-work will perpetuate on the enduring page the memory of our heroes living and dead.

Our printers report our space all filled, and we must reluctantly leave out [48] what we had to say of Augusta, Athens, Rome, and Greenville, S. C., at all of which places we met a cordial greeting, and were placed under high obligations for courtesies freely extended.

But we must say, that Colonel C. C. Jones, Jr., and the committee in Augusta—Dr. Newton, Captain Charlton, and others, in Athens—Captain Bamwell, Colonel Magruder, and others, in Rome-General Capers, Colonel Montgomery, and others, in Greenville—all did their best to make our visits pleasant, and the lecture a success, and that the Greenville News but voiced the general feeling at all of these places when it said the morning of our arrival: ‘General Lee! Greenville welcomes you to-day with the heartiness born of loyalty to the cause you represent, of love for the name you bear, and of honor for the fame you won, when fame was gained with bared breast and blade, fearless heart, and patriotism that recked nothing of consequence.’

Our programme is not yet definitely arranged, but we are purposing another tour very soon, when we can ask nothing more than that we may meet with like treatment and success.