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

‘ [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