Guilty of no wrong.
Colonel O'Ferrall in conclusion said: ‘In meeting here on this occasion we are guilty of no wrong to the
Government under which we live.
When the darkness of defeat closed around us we pledged our allegiance to the flag against which we had fought.
We have kept our pledge; we are loyal to our Government; and base is the tongue that dares to question our sincerity.
We are here in no spirit of disloyalty, unless the cherishing of sacred memories and the honoring of our dead be disloyalty; and if so, then I glory in the fact that I am in the midst of one of the most disloyal bands that ever stood under the rays of Heaven's sun since manhood was made to grow in the human breast, and man's heart was filled with the impulses of honor and truth, courage and fidelity.
While we are loyal to the
Union by the mothers who bore us, by the fathers who taught us, by the wives who cherish us, by the children who love us, by the homes that shelter us, by the land that nurtured us, by the heavens above us, by the earth beneath us, we swear to be loyal to our dead.’
