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who had been the terror of the enemy in the hour of battle but was as peaceful as a lamb after the conflict, when he found he was on a bed of death, calmly folded his arms, resigning his soul to God and saying: “Let us cross over the river and rest under the shade of the trees.”
We do not claim to appropriate all his glory, but we hold dear every part of him that nobody else wants.
And there was Lee, the calm, faithful, far-seeing, dauntless Lee. As a soldier and engineer he penetrated the Mexican pedrigal and discovered a route by which the army must be led. To him more than to anybody else must be ascribed the capture of the city of Mexico.
We do not wish to wholly appropriate the glory of Lee but will willingly share it with those who have an equal right to it, and we would rather they should claim some share of the grand conduct of Lee at Chancellorsville, Fredericksburg, the Wilderness, and everywhere that soldiers met soldiers against mighty odds.
There was the great General Sidney Johnston, distinguished in the Black Hawk war and the siege of Monterey, holding a position in the army with a rank beyond his age and prospects the most inviting to a soldier, he surrendered everything in order to vindicate the principles he believed to be true, and came with nothing but his right arm and his good sword to offer his services to the Confederacy.
Never was man more true to his duty, more devoted to his cause, or more sincere in his purposes, as was shown in the hour of his death, when, on the field of Shiloh, having driven the enemy from every position before him save one, which he saw must be carried to make the victory complete, he led a column to storm it, receiving a death wound from which the life-blood was pouring, he recked not of himself, but thinking, feeling only of his country and its cause, rode on until he fell lifeless from his horse.
May not the Genius of Patriotism as she bent over the form of the soldier so pure, so true, so devoted, have dropped a tear on a sacrifice so untimely slain upon her altar?
Then I repeat it, such men do not belong to us alone.
Shall their memories fade, and rising generations not feel the influence of such grand examples?
May it not well come to pass that in some hour of the country's need, future generations, aware of the grandeur and the virtue of those men, will in a moment of disaster cry out like the ancient Scot:
O for an hour of Wallace wight
Or well-trained Bruce
To lead the fight,
And cry St. Andrew and our right.
