The Confederate dead of Mississippi. Unveiling of a monument to them at Jackson, Miss., June 3, 1890.
oration by Senator E. C. Walthall.
Not since the memorable days of 1865 had so many men who wore the gray been at one time in the city of Jackson, Miss., as on this bright and balmy Wednesday, June 3, 1890. It was computed that the visitors numbered more than twenty thousand. Before the sun was up the streets were a moving mass of humanity. The old veterans were full of enthusiasm, and cheer after cheer filled the air as they caught sight of one of their distinguished leaders. When General Gordon and Governor Stone appeared at the City Hall to head the line of March, both of themWere seized and born aloft
upon the shoulders of as many old soldiers as could lay hands on them. At 10 o'clock this morning the National Guards of this State, under command of General Billups, marched from their quarters through the streets to the City Hall, where the grand procession formed, and after marching through the streets, proceeded to the monument, where the unveiling ceremonies took place.Order of forming.
From the City Hall the procession moved to the Capitol at 11 A. M., in the following order: 1. Mississippi National Guard. [294] 2. A decorated float bearing fifteen young ladies, representing the States of the Confederacy, each bearing a flag (the charming feature of the procession). 3. Officers Ladies' Monumental Association. 4. Members of the family of the late President Jefferson Davis. 3. Distinguished Confederate veterans in carriages. 6. General J. A. Smith in command of the following: (a) Organized Posts Confederate Veterans. (b) Unattached Confederate Veterans. (c) Organized Posts Sons of Confederate Veterans. The Mississippi National Guard was represented by the following companies, in command of General Billups: Caledonian Rifles, Columbus Riflemen, Starkville Guards, Brown Cadets, Cadet Rifles, Lee Guards, West Point Rifles, Clarkesville Light Guards, Volunteer Southrons, Crystal Springs Volunteers, Mississippi Southrons, College Rifles, Mississippi Invincibles, Capital Light Guards, Oktibbeha Rangers, and the Warren Light Artillery. The artillery, with their Gatling gun exhibitions, were aGreat feature of the day.
Governor Stone was commander-in-chief, and the line of the march was headed by General Gordon, General Kirby Smith, General Cabell, General W. T. Martin, and other distinguished soldiers, General Joyce Smith being in command of the Confederate Veterans, who showed up in great strength and style. After the military came, the float bearing fifteen beautiful ladies, who representedThe different Southern States
at the unveiling, as follows: Miss Annie Stone, representing the Southern Confederacy; Miss Annie L. Stone, representing Missouri; Miss Courtenay Walthall, Virginia; Miss Corinne Hortense Sykes, North Carolina; Miss Annabel Power, Kentucky; Miss Elise Featherstone, Georgia; Miss Elise Govan, Florida; Miss Nellie Fewell, Alabama; Miss Mary Belle Morgan, Louisiana; Miss Caroline Kerr Martin, Texas; Miss Virginia Hunt, Arkansas; Miss Sallie Eleanor Cowan, Tennessee; Miss Marie Lowry, Mississippi; Miss Annie Hemingway, South Carolina; Miss Katie Porter, Maryland. Then came carriages containing the officers of the Ladies' Confederate Monument Association, with Miss Sallie B. Morgan as president; [295] Mrs. Hays, the daughter of Jefferson Davis, accompanied by her husband and son. Next came carriages containing distinguished Confederate veterans, followed by the organized camps Confederate Veterans and the remnants of half a dozen famous Mississippi Confederate regiments. The floats bearing young ladies representing the different Southern States was greatly admired.The Sons of Veterans
made a good showing. Among the officers of the National Guards who assisted in commanding the great army in line were Major G. M. Govan, Colonel George Green, Major G. G. Dillard, and many others. The procession then moved to the monument, where the unveiling ceremonies took place as follows: Prayer—Rev. Father F. A. Picheret. Unveiling monument. Address—General E. C. Walthall. Poem—Mrs. Luther Manship. Unveiling statue of Jefferson Davis. Address—General Robert Lowry. Benediction—Chaplain H. F. Sproles. The stand is constructed just east of the monument, in full view of the monument and overlooking the valley below. At 11:15 o'clock, when the procession arrived at the capitol, the yard and the space around the stand was literally packed and jammed with an eager crowd. Every available place was over-filled, including the windows of the adjacent buildings. The stand was occupied by the fifteen young ladies who represented the different Southern States, theParticipants in the ceremonies,
and a large number of guests. The space in front of the stand was occupied by the Confederate Veterans, and the space to the left by the Mississippi National Guard. The ceremonies were opened with music by the band, after which Rev. Father H. A. Picheret, of Vicksburg, delivered the followingPrayer:
O, Lord Jesus, who, whilst upon this earth, didst ever show Thyself the friend and defender of the oppressed, we ardently beseech [296] Thee to look down in love and mercy upon us, assembled here to render honor to our lamented brothers-in-arms who have fallen in the holy cause of right and justice. Thou, O Lord, who wert falsely charged with being a traitor to Thy country and didst unjustly suffer a cruel death, Thou at least will sympathize with us in our lost cause, and we pray Thee to vindicate and to guard the memory of our comrades, who, likewise wrongfully accused and condemned, willingly—aye, cheerfully—laid down their lives on the consecrated altar of patriotism and liberty. May the patriots of every nation unite with us to-day in weaving an imperishable garland to the fame of our gallant, true-hearted and brave Confederate soldiers, who stood undaunted, shoulder to shoulder, around their commanders though they were as one to a thousand, and who, when overpowered by numbers, fought to the end, handing from one to the other their blood-stained banner, until they fell dead on the battle-field with the patriotic cry upon their lips: ‘For the rights of our native land.’ May this magnificent monument uplifting its head forever cry out to God and to man, not for pity, but for justice. But if, in the course of ages, the all-destroying hand of time should cause it to crumble into dust, grant, O Lord, that the remembrance of the knightly deeds of our Confederate heroes may never die out in the generous hearts of the Southern people, and that it may be a perennial fountain of lofty patriotism whereat our descendants may renew their vigor and admire with stimulating profit the achievements of so splendid an ancestry in behalf of right. We thank Thee, O Lord, that amid all the selfishless and all the commonplace of this age, it has been given us to look upon a man of unswerving fidelity to duty and of uncompromising principles—a man who, in the midst of reverses and calamities that would have broken even a strong heart, remained as firm and immovable in his sincere convictions as the solitary rock in mid-ocean against which the angry waves beat in vain; a man who, for the sake of principle, lost all save honor—our illustrious chieftain, Jefferson Davis! We pray Thee, O Lord, bless! oh, bless with Thy choicest gifts, the ‘Daughter of the Confederacy,’ the most precious legacy left to the lost cause, the dearest pledge of our leader's love to the companion of his glory and of his adverse fortunes. May she ever be the perfect embodiment of the righteous principles of the Southern people and prove herself the worthy daughter of so noble a sire. [297] Bless, O Lord, the self-sacrificing women of Mississippi, who, like the Marys at the foot of the cross, through weal and woe, have unfalteringly followed the varying fortune of the Confederate cause; who, in the dead hour of final defeat, with brave though bleeding hearts, have sustained the drooping spirits of the men wearing the gray, and who, out of their boundless love and fidelity to a sad but not inglorious past, have erected this superb monument to the memory of our martyred heroes. Finally, we pray Thee, O Lord, to bless the now few remaining survivors of the lost cause, who are, the most of us, being rapidly hurried on in their last march toward that bourne from whence there is no returning; and if it be Thy will that this should be our last gathering on earth, we pray Thee, O Lord, that our next grand reunion may take place under Thy heavenly tents beyond the starry skies; and that, when the roll of the Confederate army shall be called, we may be there, all present, with our once conquered but then restored banner, and thus form a halo of immortal glory around our vindicated chieftain. Departed comrades, may the sweet-scented flowers of our genial climate ever bloom over your blood-consecrated graves; may the guardian angels of the South keep their watch over your precious ashes till the last trumpet shall call you to arise and to hear from an all-righteous Judge the consoling invitation: ‘Well done, good and faithful servant, enter into the joy of your Lord.’ Amen. Then Hon. C. E. Hooker, in behalf of the Ladies' Monument Association of Mississippi, made a brief but most impressive and able address in presentation of the monument to the State; after which, amid the booming of cannons, Mrs. Margaret Hays, daughter of Jefferson Davis, assisted by her little son, Jefferson Davis Hays, gracefully pulled the string that connected with the veil, and the next moment the white statue of the soldier surmounting the monument was disclosed to the eyes of those present.Colonel J. R. M'Intosh, of meridian,
in behalf of the Confederate veterans and the State, then made an appropriate response to the address of Colonel Hooper. General E. C. Walthall, the orator of the day, arose amid cheers and applause and made a profound address to the assembled crowd. General Walthall said:[298]
General Walthall's Address.
Ladies and gentlemen: After the lapse of more than a quarter of a century since the war ended between the North and the South, we come to offer Mississippi's formal tribute to those who fell upon the Southern side. This tasteful monument, due to woman's zeal, is a lasting but tardy testimony of a feeling which has lived and grown in the hearts of the people since they, whose virtues it commemorates, laid down their lives for the honor of the State. A generation has well nigh come and gone since this open tribute was due, and its payment now is proof that we act upon no transient impulse, but a strong and staple sentiment, which has endured and will endure. This day is distant from the stormy period to which these rites relate; the martial ardor, which the notes of war aroused, has long ago abated, and the seal of Southern honor has been set upon the pledge of peace; yet, after all these years we are here to declare before the world that this monument betokens our cordial recognition and deliberate sanction of the intent and of the action of those whom it commemorates, and that it is our public attestation that their intent was pure and their action honorable. Neither time nor change nor circumstance can alter this our mature conviction, and to openly affirm it here, this vast concourse of the people have assembled. It is for this that men and women, old and young, of every shade of taste and opinion and from every vocation in life, have come together to day. They do not come to celebrate a National holiday, nor a day signalized in history by some great civic achievment, nor the anniversary of some decisive battle that fixed a nation's fate, or swept away some old landmark of our race. It is not ambition, nor the hope of gain, nor self-interest in any form, that brings together these earnest men and women. They are not here to ask anything from their Government, nor to present any grievance, nor to petition for any redress, nor to protest against any wrong. With good will to the powers that be, to each other and to the world, they come upon a peaceful and an honorable mission. It is a sentiment, a mere sentiment, that brings them together, but it is an elevating and an ennobling sentiment. The soldiers come to attest the sincere motives and the honorable conduct of their dead comrades during the perils and trials of our bloody struggle, and they, and all others [299] here, come to give their sanction and endorsement to the objects and purposes of this great gathering of peaceful citizens. Assembled for such a purpose, we naturally look back to the causes and the conduct of the civil war, that we may see for what and how those to whom this monument is reared struggled and suffered and died. The occasion permits of but a cursory review, and affords no opportunity to make contributions to history, or do more than comment briefly on what is history now, and what it teaches and illustrates. In the foreground stands the monumental fact, always to be kept in view, that although it has since been settled by arms, and settled finally, that a State cannot secede from the Union, it was not so settled in 1861, and the absence of a power, in this government of granted powers, to coerce a sovereign State had not then been supplied by actual force, and the forced construction of the Federal Constitution, which exists now, had not then been established. Without looking further back for the origin and advocates of the view of constitutional power on which the Southern people took up arms, it may be said that John C. Calhoun, in his day, was the leading representative and exponent, and it was of him that Mr. Jefferson Davis said, in the United States Senate, the day after Mississippi passed the ordinance of secession, ‘He was the wisest statesman I ever knew.’ Devoted to the peculiar interests and institutions of the South, but an ardent lover of peace and of the Union, all through his public life Mr. Calhoun vigorously contended for a strict construction of the Federal Constitution, and persistently claimed for the States every right which they had not surrendered under it. His political philosophy had the endorsement of a long list of distinguished names, but, as to its leading features, there was none more emphatic or more potential than that of Mr. Davis, despite some divergence in their views touching the limits of a State's power while remaining in the Union. By his powerful reasoning Mr. Calhoun sought to enforce certain sound and salutary lessons of constitutional interpretation, which, had they been accepted in both sections of the Union as they were in one, our country would have been spared four years of waste and suffering and blood. But they were rejected, and out of the construction, and, as we thought, the perversion of our written Constitution, arose the gigantic conflicts of arms which followed. In that conflict, [300] sustained, as we believed, by the fundamental principle of popular liberty, we staked our all upon the supreme sovereignty of a State, and the inalienable rights of the people of the States. Our construction of the Constitution lost much favor, to which it was entitled, because ‘slavery was sheltered under the sovereignty of the State,’ and in our contention we encountered all the prejudice against slavery, which was so intense that many, who agreed with us on the questions involved, when abstractly considered, readily adopted any construction which looked to the overthrow of that institution. But we did not go to war for slavery, though slavery was interwoven with the causes and intensified the bitterness of the war, and the fate of slavery was forever settled by the result. We were not precipitated into it by reckless public men, who had not counted the cost; for the great leaders, and notably Mr. Davis, were slower in the movement than the masses of the Southern people. We did not take up arms because we were dissatisfied with our form of government, for we valued that then as we value it now; and we so loved the Constitution for the safeguards of liberty which we read in it that we fashioned our Confederate Constitution after it as a model. We loved the flag, too, with its stars telling of co-equal States in a common Union, so long as it floated above us with that symbolism. Happily it now floats over us again as the full equals of all who live under its protection. The war, with us, did not originate in ambition, nor did we fight for spoils, for conquest or for fame. With us it was no war of invasion or of retaliation or of revenge. It was not to build up some great leader's fortunes nor to elevate some popular favorite to place or power. We went to war for none of these; but it was to ‘save the Constitution,’ as we read it, and to save ourselves, and to preserve our cherished form of government. We resisted those perversions which we believed would destroy that Constitution and us, and subvert that form of government. Those whose interests were not ours, as ours were not theirs, sought, as we believed, by a ‘system of constructions’ to gain what was not given in the compact under which all were living, and to ignore and obliterate the true intent and meaning and purpose of that compact. This perversion of the Constitution, as it seemed to us, was wilful and systematic, and daily it grew more dangerous and unendurable, and we felt we could not, without dishonor and disaster, submit to what seemed inevitably coming and actually impending. Our rights and liberties seemed in the utmost peril, and the danger was increased [301] by delay. After all efforts for peaceful solution had proved of no avail, and our great leaders' plea, ‘We ask only for the Constitution,’ had brought forth no response, and only when there was ‘no longer any room for hope,’ did we ‘appeal to arms and to the God of battles.’ Then, throughout the South, ‘We must fight’ was sounded from the mountains to the sea—and we did fight; and to such a fight as our dead heroes and their comrades made there is no parallel in history, and never can be until some other people equal to ours in courage and endurance, with the same stimulus and the same spirit of devotion, shall shut their eyes to untold odds against them and close their ears to every warning of calculation or policy, and wage a great war upon a cherished sentiment and sincere conviction. It was the effort to establish the true boundary line between the constitutional authority of a State and the general government that brought the war upon us. It was to maintain the theory of government which Mr. Calhoun and those of his school taught us that six hundred thousand Southern soldiers went eagerly to the field, and they to whom we raise this monument freely gave up their lives. It was not for power, nor for riches, nor for ambition's sake, but for a great governmental principle of right which was rooted and grounded in their faith and sanctioned by their judgments. Without altering or wavering our martyred dead stood by this principle with their lives, and while the great guns of war shook to its center this now peaceful and prosperous land; while men were slain by tens of thousands and hearts were stricken and homes were darkened; while the groans of the dying and the wails of those bereft burdened the very air from Maryland to the Rio Grande, inspired by their example those who survived stood to the very last by the teachings of Calhoun and Davis, and those who held the same political faith. When the end came, and with disappointment and defeat, it seemed only natural that the losses and afflictions of those whose banners had gone down should engender bitterness toward those whose teaching and guidance had contributed to produce the disastrous conflict. Here was a trying test of fidelity, sincerity and truth, and here the grandest characteristic of our noble Southern people finds beautiful and honorable illustration. No citizen nor soldier, no man nor woman, of all the bereaved and disappointed sons and daughters of the South, ever cursed the memory or even impugned the statesmanship of Calhoun, for whose political doctrines they had risked all and lost all; and for our grand [302] old chief, who came home to spend his declining years within the limits of our State and his, there never was a breath of criticism or repining from his scourged and afflicted people—nothing but faith and trust, affection, admiration, sympathy, and honor. It was most fitting and becoming that the evening of his life should be passed on the soil of the state to whose name he had brought so much of honor and distinction. In the dignified retirement of his unpretending home, on the southern border of that separate southern nationality for which, in vain, his best efforts and powers had been given, this disfranchised citizen of a government whose flag he had defended with his blood had a firmer hold upon the hearts of his people than any ruler reigning in the world. There is nothing in history like this. Look over the course of nations from the dawn of time, turn through the books of the world's history whenever written, search all the annals of the earth, and you will find no other single instance where a vanquished people have so idolized the leader of a cause that had failed. Pardon me if I linger upon this thought. It fills me with admiration and with gratitude. I am proud and I am thankful that I am of a people who have this matchless record of devotion to lay before the world—proud of whatever of their strength I gain from their example, and if, as has been said, their deep sentimental nature is their weakness, I am thankful that I share that weakness. I glory in that quality, whatever it is, which makes them true to their own history, for it is the same that sustained them in war and gave them strength to bear the greater strain to which they were afterward subjected, and makes them the true and loyal citizens they are to-day. But what less was to be expected of these people, with their history and traditions and the examples they have had to give them strength and inspiration? Back to the time when this government was organized, and before, we can turn with pride and point to what Southern men have done to elevate mankind and stimulate and cultivate the aspirations of the masses of the people and to make this country what it is. From among them came the statesman who wrote the Declaration of Independence, and, strange as it may sound in this day of universal freedom, it is said that all who signed that declaration, except those from the State of Massachusetts, and perhaps one or two others, were slaveholders. From among them came the Father of His Country, the father of the Constitution and the greatest of all its expounders. At the head of great armies, in the presidential office, in cabinet and court, and in all the nation's [303] high councils, everywhere, in peace and in war, great Southern lights illuminate the annals of America and shed upon our country's name its chief honor and renown. From the foundation of the government, through all the epochs of peace and arms, down to 1861, Southern statesmen and orators, Southern philosophers and judges, Southern patriots and soldiers, have enacted the brightest chapters of this country's history, and to them we are indebted for the fundamental sources of its present power. When the disunion movement grew out of the construction of our written Constitution, which was adopted ‘to form a more perfect union,’ and the Southern people sought to withdraw from the government to which they had contributed so much, the great war came and with it came the matchless Southern soldier. Manhood, and pride, and honor, were his rightful inheritance, coming down to him through a long line of Southern patriots, who were the moulders of Southern sentiment and opinion, and through fire and blood he proved himself a true exemplar of these virtues. His figure will stand out in history as the most resplendent illustration the world has ever known of duty eagerly performed, of unrequited sacrifice without complaint, and of spirit proof against despair. There is not time, which I regret, to mention names, nor rank, nor conspicuous service. The roll of honor is too long for this-too full of deeds of heroism and patriotism. I must be content to deal with the Confederate soldier as a type and the Confederate dead as a class, and yet I feel that none here will consider me invidious if I stay to call a single name. I would speak of him who, when he saw the end of the struggle was near, said to a distinguished general from his own State: ‘Sir, the men of this war who will deserve the most honor and gratitude are not the men of rank, but the men of the ranks—the privates.’ This just tribute to the nameless heroes who won fame and titles for other men came from one, himself of highest rank, of whom years ago, in time of profound peace, the head of the American army declared he was the greatest soldier then living in the world, and, if there should be opportunity, he would ‘prove himself the greatest captain in history.’ The occasion came, and Robert E. Lee made good the prediction of his old commander. When history comes to exercise its proper province of impartiality. and the world shall view his achievements in connection with the meagre means at his command and the adverse conditions by which he was beset, the world's verdict, as I believe it, will be: Greater than Napoleon or Wellington; greater even than Washington had [304] the opportunity to prove himself in war. Verily the greatest captain in history was the chief of the tattered Southern forces; great as the victor of a hundred fields won by his skill and valor, but grand in the calm dignity of his quiet life of usefulness and honor, after all hope of separate Southern independence had been blotted out in darkness forever. From the day when he put away the crown and refused the chief command of all the United States armies in the field to stand by his native State, and, as he said, to ‘share the miseries of his people,’ down through his marvelous career to the hour of his christian death, General Lee's life was a lesson to mankind that there was nothing too lofty, nothing too severe, for the highest type of Southern manhood to do or to endure at the call of duty or of honor. He said that ‘human virtue should be equal to human adversity,’ and his life, and the life of Mr. Davis and the lives of thousands of their humble followers, have proven that it was so in these illustrious Southern leaders and those inspired by their example. They, whose conduct illustrated this, were the representatives and the jewels of the old South——the fair and fruitful land, where manhood and high endeavor, lofty sentiment, and open hospitality, found their favorite habitation. That old South has its waste places and its ruins to mark the track of war; it has its broken shafts and fallen temples, but it has its traditions and its memories to inspire and strengthen the hopes and hearts and hands of its men and women, and it has its history, which is the honor and glory of its people. In this day when not business alone, but public virtue and private honor, official fidelity, and even the observances of religion are looked upon and estimated too much, I fear, from the standpoint of hard practicality and ‘trade,’ men come among us and prate of building up what they are pleased to term a ‘New South’—as if the safest elements and the most valuable constituent forces which can enter into a new order and new customs here must not come from what is left of us the old. They would have us break all our cherished images, bury ‘a past that is not dead—that cannot die,’ and consign all its precious memories and splendid examples to oblivion. Undervaluing our people, and allowing nothing for the hard conditions with which they must contend, they point us to our thrifty Northern neighbors as patterns for our imitation, and exhort us to keep abreast of what they style the progressive spirit of the age. These disciples of modern progress mean well in what they say, but the common sense of those they would instruct has long ago suggested and adopted all that is worth knowing or observing in their [305] cold philosophy. All of us are eager to know from any who can teach us how, better than we are doing, we can adapt ourselves to our changed condition, and to follow any example, wherever found, which has in it any useful lesson that we ought to learn. But all this can be better done if we keep alive and foster, for our guidance and support, those distinctive Southern sentiments and characteristic qualities which have been the strength of our people, and on which not only their prosperity and progress, but, in view of their peculiar surroundings, their safety also must depend. For some fancied advantage of an utilitarian kind let us be slow to give up something worth more to us, even in matters purely practical, than all that is promised in return. Let us not profanely turn our backs upon the old South with its traditions and examples and hallowed memories; let us never stifle the sentiment which has animated its sons and daughters and sink it into mere flinty practicality on the false idea that the virtues which make our people what they are are incompatible with true progress and improvement. It does not argue that we do not live in the present, and look hopefully to the future, that we cling to the memories of the past. We can love the Union and still delight to dwell upon the course of those who are faithful to the Union now, as they were to the Southern cause. We do not stand in the way of the earnest work of real progress when we deprecate any tendency to decay in Southern manhood, and foster those sentiments which will guide us and inspire us, hereafter as heretofore, to be true alike to ourselves and the government to which our allegiance is due. If any here consider these expressions the offspring of mere Southern ardor and enthusiasm, I would ask them what it was that moved old and young, rich and poor, slaveholders and non-slaveholders, ministers of the church and men of the world, the sedate and thoughtful, the reckless and impulsive, all alike, in eleven States, to rise up as one man and fly to arms with one impulse in 1861? What was it that sustained them, with a government born almost under fire, without organization or military training, arms, supplies or means, without allies or sympathy, shut in by a close blockade and shut out from all the world, with the organized government and its army and navy and treasury and its own vast resources backed up by foreign commerce and manufactures, all against them, what sustained them in a four-years' contest with the trained troops of the government and the volunteers of all the States of the mighty North and the legions of mercenaries drawn from the nations beyond [306] the seas? Do not seek to account for it without resort to something higher than mere physical courage and ordinary endurance; for if you do, the facts and figures of recorded history will overwhelm you. Listen to some of these: More than half as many men were enrolled in the Union army as the entire white population of the Southern States proper, including all the women and the children. The records show that more than two million eight hundred and fifty thousand troops were furnished the Union army by the States, and while, for lack of official data, I cannot state to a man the enlistments in the Southern army from first to last, the estimate has the sanction of high authority deemed reliable that the Confederate forces available for action during the entire war did not exceed six hundred thousand soldiers, of whom there were not more than two hundred thousand arms-bearing men at any one time, and when the war closed half that number covered the whole effective force of all arms in all quarters of the Confederacy. Besides the disparity in the land forces there was the Federal navy, the gunboats and the ironclads, without which many believe Grant's army would have been lost at Shiloh and McClellan's on the Peninsula. When the Union army was dissolved four hundred thousand more men were borne upon its rolls than the estimated number of available enlistments in the Southern army from the spring of 1861 to the spring of 1865, and during that time there had been two hundred and seventy thousand Federal prisoners captured. But this enumeration need not be extended. The battle-fields, which are the burying grounds of our ‘unreturning dead,’ attest the resolution of the weaker side, and the eighty-two beautiful national cemeteries, where more than three hundred thousand Union soldiers are interred, illustrate the fierceness of the fiery struggle. The odds of which the figures tell to which I have adverted do not present in their best light the constancy and devotion of the soldiers of the South. For proof of this see the troops of one State, whose territory must be uncovered to save some other point, leave family and home defenceless, to fall within hostile lines behind them, and march cheerfully, though footsore and weary, half clad and often hungry, to other fields to defend the soil of other States, when if they had chosen the alternative of desertion charity would have palliated their crime. But if you seek for that which most won the homage of the world [307] you find it in the Southern soldier's conduct after the time in the fateful year 1863, when reason, but for faith, had adjudged that the destiny of the Confederacy was decided and the Southern movement doomed. After the failure at Gettysburg and the fall of Vicksburg, the men who had stood with Lee at Sharpsburg—less than forty thousand against more than eighty thousand—bouyant with hope in 1862, stood steadily as then before Richmond in 1865, after all ground for hope was gone, against three times their number of veterans under Grant. The immolation at Franklin, where eleven Southern generals and the flower of their followers fell fighting against fate, and the gallantry at Bentonville, following the disaster at Nashville, attest the unabated earnestness and fidelity of those who at Shiloh had performed prodigies of valor, inspired by the hope and prospect of Southern independence. After these brief but suggestive recitals is it too much to say that in the war the Southern people waged to save the Constitution and themselves, there was something sustaining them which they knew not of who only fought to put these people down? In this there is no implication of which the brave defenders of the Union will complain—they fought for the government and we for home, its altars and its idols, and all that is nearest to the hearts of men. They did their duty, and did it well, and made the Union whole; they have the glory of success and the laurel crown of victory, and they have the nation's gratitude and praise, its care and unrestricted bounty. We begrudge them none of these. They earned them all in the bloody strife which ended in the downfall of the cause in which our martyrs died. We have the memories of these martyrs to cherish and revere, we have our ‘consecrated coronet of sorrow,’ and we have the image of the Confederate soldier which he has graven upon the tablets of history to tell our story for us, and we are content. A soldier who yields to none in his devotion to the Union, nor in his recognition of the prowess and the skill of those who fought to save it, is in no danger of misrepresentation by the brave men whom he confronted on the field, if he eschew all affectation and hypocricy when he speaks of his own comrades whom he loves for the dangers they have seen together. If the time is coming when the portraits of Lee and Grant shall hang side by side in the houses of the people North and South, those who would hail its advent with delight cannot [308] hasten it by repression or deceit, nor can the currents of fraternity be made to flow faster by choking the fountains of unreserved expression.The Southern soldier as a citizen in peace.
It has been said that in a republic like ours every citizen is a soldier and every soldier a citizen. Living under such a system, it is proper to consider the civic in connection with the military qualities of those who are the State's dependence in peace and war alike. Mississippi, having sent virtually all her white male adult population to the field, was dependent for her rehabilitation in peace upon the men who had been her soldiers in war, and if we will but glance at the vicissitudes which have marked her history, while the events of 1861 to 1865 have been receding into the past, it will appear that the record of the Southern soldier's service to the State, as a citizen in peace, is a worthy compliment of that he made in war. In that time the State and her people have known many shifting fortunes, some sad and sickening, disgraceful to those who were their authors; some wholesome and hopeful, creditable to those who wrought them out. There was harshness by the victors not wholly unexpected, some leniency which the vanquished appreciated, and much unjust opinion followed by reaction and correction. There were wrongs which have been righted, trials that have ended, humiliation which honor and courage have survived—there was darkness followed by the light of day. In that time our great chief, whose natal day was fitly chosen for these ceremonies, was cast into prison without warrant, to come forth without plea for pardon, undismayed, and vindicate himself and his cause in a great history read by all the nations of the earth, and to live and die dearer to his people than in the day of his greatest power. We have seen one governor a prisoner and another removed by force to make way for an intruder, backed up by military power. Later we saw the same intruder embrace the privilege of vacating the same office in advance of a judgment of impeachment, and since then we have seen successive incumbents of the people's choice fill that office ably, faithfully, and acceptably. We have seen our senators and representatives, duly chosen and accredited, turned away from the Capitol at Washington as unworthy to participate in national legislation; but for years, in either house, [309] there have been none to question their rightful status or challenge their official equality. We have seen the stream of public justice so polluted that great judges left the bench and disdained to exercise the powers of a court ‘in subordination to the behests of a military commander,’ and for a decade and a half we have seen that bench adorned by the equals of those who left it in disgust, dispensing justice freely, with a firm and even hand. We have seen our laws dictated by a spirit of plunder and oppression, and passed by ignorant strangers and pretenders; we see them now the product of intelligence and honest purpose, bearing equally upon the rich and poor and fostering every worthy interest in the State. At a time when the passions of war had not subsided, and there was bitterness in the hearts of those in one section toward their countrymen in the other; at a time when the South was no readier than the North for the lessons of forgiveness and fraternity which had to be taught and learned before there could be any real peace or progress for us here; at such a time as this we saw a great Mississippian move out in advance of his own people, a pioneer in a dangerous field, and sound the first note of pacification, which in time brought the North and South together. We heard him tell our estranged and distrustful brethren that ‘the South prostrate, exhausted, drained of her life blood, but still honorable and true, accepts the bitter award of the bloody arbitrament without reservation,’ and we saw men turn and listen to his plea for peace, good-will, and justice. We have seen the influence of that plea widen and extend from the day when it was offered, have seen it reinforced by the efforts of patriots North and South, until lately we saw a sectionalism openly condemned by the United States Senate in the rejection of a harmful measure aimed directly against the Southern States. The prime mover in this great work of restoration and conciliation, though always an ardent Southerner, and once a secessionist and a Southern soldier, was called to the cabinet of a Northern president, and sits to-day in honor in that great court where the Federal Constitution is finally construed, a living witness that the success of Southern statesmanship involves no abandonment of principle or independence. It is a far reach in our State's history back to 1865, but these few incidents, selected here and there, tell of our transition from evil days to these. The period covers ten years of oppression, spoliation, contempt of the laws, humiliation and poverty—all bravely and [310] patiently endured without the sacrifice of manhood or self-respect—followed by sixteen years of new hopes and reviving business, order gradually restored, the laws observed, blooming fields and the blessings of education liberally dispensed, until now no State in the Union outside the South shows such signs of relative improvement as ours. In all this you see the hand of the Southern soldier as a citizen in peace, and the resolution, the conservatism and unconquerable spirit of which he is the type. Those who fell upon the battle-field or died from disease or the severities of Northern prisons left an unrivalled record of duty done for State, for honor and for home, but in the providence of God they were spared the trials and the woes which tell the story of the high achievement of those they left behind. If they could reach us from the grave they would tell us that the survivors lived to encounter much that was worse than an honorable death, and that the crowning glory of this people lies in the stern virtue, the courage to endure, the self-respecting dignity and the inborn pride of character which signalized their conduct after that mockery of peace came which for a time was worse than war. The final test—the cruel, crucial test—came not when our brave men had arms in their hands and were using them in their bloody work, and our anxious women were praying for the victory which they never doubted would ultimately come, but in the dismal reconstruction period which began when the conflict of arms had ended, and brought us the rule of bayonet and with it usurpation and oppression. Then the iron heel of power was set upon the necks of the defenceless; aliens clothed with authority came among us to rule over us and to plunder us, to degrade the brave men and affront the fair women of the land. Ignorance, venality and brutality were installed in the State's high places and trampled on its laws and ,upon every right belonging to its people; and the climax of crime was completed when our new rulers armed the ignorant and deluded negroes with dangerous powers and set them in authority in the State. Through the necessities of the people these rulers tried to tempt them, and by the offers of preferment which they had the power to bestow they sought to bribe their leading men to break their faith with those who had honored them and followed them. At that time there was poverty in every house; men in every walk of life were uncertain of their bread, and gentle women were reduced to drudgery in many a stately home. The old were bowed down by the agony of disappointment, their hopes gone, [311] their fortunes wrecked and ruined, and the future stretched out hopelessly ‘like a dark and rainy sea’ before the young. Amid all this sorrow, all this horror, under the yoke, with the blackness of darkness gathering about them, these proud people, inspired and strengthened by the example of their brethren, who had died for duty, sternly withstood all, bravely endured all while they watched at the tomb and waited for the resurrection of their buried hopes. They could suffer, but they could not sell themselves—would not barter their principles for place nor power nor plunder. They clung to their honor and their self-respect. It was their Southern sentiment, ingrained, inherited, and intensified by trial, that saved and redeemed them. If you ask me if there is anything in the world's history like this, I tell you there is not. If you ask me if the courage and the constancy of the men and women of other blood or other clime could have passed through this furnace without melting in the fire, I proudly answer no! And for the security we now enjoy, for the signs of prosperity and contentment around us, and for the good government we live under in Mississippi to-day, we are indebted to that courage and pride, that instinct of honor in Southern men and women which force cannot conquer nor suffering subdue. Woe to us if we let that spirit die, for we need it here, no less than heretofore we need it now, all else aside, to maintain the status of our race while we keep up our patient struggle with that overshadowing problem which the war left us to solve—that awful problem which had its origin in the line of race and color drawn by that God who, for his own inscrutable purposes, as a great divine has said, first ‘shattered the unity of human speech’ and afterward ‘dispersed the human family in different grand divisions.’ I may not, without exceeding the limits proper to this address, pursue my subject further, and yet, in the performance of my sacred task, I feel that I have rendered but scant justice to the Southern soldier. He staked his life upon his own view of duty, and whether he sealed his devotion with his blood and died upon the battle-field, or was the victim of disease or cruelty, or lived to rescue his State from ruin as a citizen in peace, he has illustrated some quality in our people which makes them always, in responding to a principle or a sentiment, equal to any duty, any daring, any suffering, any sacrifice. There is some priceless element in Southern character that I cannot define, which makes our people at once practical and sentimental—makes them good soldiers and good citizens, sustains them in every [312] trial, adapts them to every changed condition and anchors them upon their honor as a rock; something that makes the men knightly in their deference for women, and makes the gentle woman strong when trouble comes; I know not what it is, but it is the same thing that made them true to the Confederacy while it existed and makes them true to the Union now. There is nothing disloyal in it, for it is the very essence of patriotism; there is nothing non-progressive or impractical in it, for here it must be the handmaid of all true progress and improvement; there is no weakness in it, for in it lie our chief strength and power. Call it what you will, it is real, it is Southern and it is worth preserving. It possessed those in whose honor this multitude has gathered here in the shadow of our State Capitol, where thirty years ago the people in convention ordained that Mississippi thenceforth should be ‘a free sovereign and independent State,’ and sustained them in the struggle to which that convention committed and devoted them with their consent. May this monument by its mute appeal, more eloquent than speech and more inspiring than the harp of song, stimulate the living to emulate the virtues of the dead, and keep alive in us the sentiments and qualities which make our martyrs' lives sublime and make their memories our inheritance and an inspiration for all who come after them. The following beautiful original poem was then recited by Mrs. Luther Manship:Governor Lowry followed in a graceful tribute to Jefferson Davis. This tribute was grandly eloquent, perfect in diction, and went to the hearts of the old veterans. The benediction was pronounced by Chaplain H. F. Sproles. The unveiling, and all ceremonies incident, passed off without a single unpropitious circumstance. The crowd that attended was by [315] far the largest that was ever in the city, and was most quiet and orderly. The afternoon was spent by the military companies in giving exhibition drills, which were witnessed by thousands. Twenty-five hundred veterans registered at headquarters, and the crowd numbered fully twenty thousand. Not an accident or unpleasent incident occurred. The crowd was admirably handled. No one went away hungry, or failed to find a place to sleep. The old veterans coming from a distance were cared for free.
Description of the monument.
While the memory of Mississippians of their Confederate dead has never slumbered—evinced by the erection in various counties, notably at Woodville and Liberty, of monuments to commemorate the deeds of valor of their fallen sons in the lost cause—still the idea often suggested of erecting a monument on the Capitol grounds at the Capitol of the State never took shape until 1886, when Mr. Luther Manship made the first effort toward doing something to start the monument by giving a concert and devoting the proceeds to that purpose. Soon after this the ladies organized the Confederate Monument Association. There were only nine ladies present at the first meeting. Mrs. Sallie B. Morgan presided at this meeting. Mrs. C. E. Hooker was elected president; Mrs. Brunson, vice-president; Miss Andrews, treasurer; Miss Fontaine, secretary; and Mrs. Manship, corresponding secretary. While the officers of the association were changed from time to time on account of the removal from the city, or other unavoidable reasons, the organization continued to grow, and was chartered under the laws of the State on March 17, 1887. An executive committee, consisting of Mrs. C. E. Hooker, Mrs. W. W. Stone, Mrs. Nugent, and Mrs. Dunning, was appointed, and under their legal charter, new officers, with Mrs. Sallie B. Morgan as president; Mrs. C. C. Campbell, vice-president; Mrs. W. W. Stone, treasurer; all the other former officers being re-elected, except that Miss Kate Power took the place of Miss Andrews, removed from the city. The Legislature of 1888 was called upon to make an appropriation of ten thousand dollars, and the bill passed the Senate, but was defeated in the House by a vote of fifty-nine to forty-two. The Legislature, however, at this session, donated a site for the monument in [316] the southern end of the Capitol yard. The ladies, while of course discouraged at the refusal of the Legislature to help them, bravely continued their work, and in April, 1888, closed the contract with J. T. Whitehead & Co., of Jackson, Tenn., to build the monument. On May 25, of the same year, the corner-stone was laid by the Grand Body of Masons of the State, with imposing ceremonies. Miss Winnie Davis, ‘Daughter of the Confederacy,’ was present and added much to the enthusiasm of the occasion. General Charles E. Hooker was the orator of the day. The Legislature of 1890 reversed the action of the Legislature of 1888, and a bill appropriating ten thousand dollars to the monument passed the Senate by nineteen to eleven, and the House by fifty-seven to forty-one, and was promptly approved by the governor, John M. Stone, than whom there was no braver soldier nor gallant colonel who drew blade for the Confederacy. The appropriation secured, added to the amount collected by the ladies, the completion of the monument was only a question of time; and to-day it stands not only as a ‘monument to the Confederate dead,’ but as a monument to the undying and untiring energy as well as to the devotion of the women of Mississippi to the cause lost but not forgotten. The monument stands in the southern end of the Capitol grounds. It stands upon a concrete foundation; the base is twenty-four feet square. The arches and supports are of white limestone from Bowling Green, Ky. The dies resting on the stone bases are intended to represent the walls of a castle of the olden times pattern, and are thirteen and twenty-four feet in dimensions. On the north and south sides, on a smooth marble slab, is the inscription: ‘To the Confederate Dead of Mississippi.’ The vaulted chamber, which opens east and west, and which is to contain the statue of Jefferson Davis, is about seven feet high, and will be locked when the statue is put in place. This vault or receptacle is octagon in shape, has a red and white marble floor, in the centre of which the corner-stone and inscription placed thereon May 5, 1888, is of red and white marble. It is over seven feet in diameter. The statue of Mr. Davis, which is to stand in the centre of the chamber over the corner or centre stone, was made in Italy, and represents Mr. Davis in the act of delivering a speech, there being a scroll of paper in his right hand and a pile of books at his feet. On the six marble slabs forming the walls of this chamber are the following inscriptions: [317]The noble women of Mississippi, moved by grateful hearts and loving zeal, organized June 15, A. D. 1886, the Confederate Monument Association. Their efforts, aided by an appropriation of the State of Mississippi, were crowned with success in the erection of this Monument to the Confederate Dead of Mississippi in the year 1891. The men to whose memory this Monument is dedicated were the martyrs of their creed. Their justification is in the holy keeping of the God of history. God and our consciences alone
Give us measures of right and wrong;
The race may fall unto the swift
And the battle to the strong.
But the truth will shine in history
And blossom into song.
From the top of the slabs forming the chamber rises an arched coping of nine and a half feet. From this springs the bases of the plinth of the spire, seven and a half feet high. Four Egyptian columns support the marble entablature on the corners. On the west side the [318] eagle and coat-of-arms of the State of Mississippi appear. On the north side a Confederate flag and cannon are to be seen. On the east side belts and crossed sabres appear, and on the south side rifles with shield, inscribed ‘Mississippi Volunteers.’ From the plinth rises the spire, three feet seven inches square at the bottom, and tapering to the top. The shaft proper is thirty feet high. A statue of a Confederate soldier surmounts the entire structure. With musket in hand he is represented as standing in the position of parade rest. The figure is six feet ten inches high, chiseled by Mr. Whitehead out of rough white marble, and is quite natural looking and lifelike. The height of the monument is sixty feet four inches.
