Southern Historical Society Papers, Volume 30.
Reverend J. William Jones, Ed.

---

[314] can we make her, in the future, the land of poetry and romance. It is Wallace and Tell who are the heroes of the poet and the novelist, not the commanders of the great forces with which they contended. In the far future many a novel, many a poem, and many a song will tell of Lee, of Jackson, of Stuart and of Mosby—ideal heroes of romance—long after the names of the leaders who fought them will be mere facts in the prosaic history of the power of the greater to overcome the less.

It is not our duty to weep over the past or to bemoan the fate which resulted in the final overthrow of the Confederacy; nor should we do anything to keep alive the bitterness of that strife. On the contrary, it is our duty to bow to the logic of what has happened and to believe in the wisdom of the all-wise Director of the affairs of nations and of peoples; but it is also our duty to see to it that what is good and great be preserved, and that our children and children's children keep green the traditions which will nerve them to a higher courage and stimulate them to a generous emulation of the deeds of their forefathers.