You have heard the eloquent orator just speak of
Albert Sidney Johnston, an orator whose eloquence is intensified by his sleeveless arm, and I can add but little to what has already been said.
It was from
Louisiana that
Albert Sidney Johnston received his first commission in the army; and there is no State so appropriate as
Louisiana, and no city so appropriate as New Orleans for a monument to his memory; here, among the people who followed the fortunes of the
Confederacy with such devotion.
I knew him well.
He immediately preceded me to the United States Military Academy, and when I came there he received me as an elder brother might do. Together we served on the
Indian frontier, together we served in
Mexico.
I have seen him in the most trying situations, and I never saw a man whose mind worked so quickly, whose voice was so calm, whose purpose was so fixed, and whose bearing was so great.
Physically grand, intellectually great, morally sublime, his life was devoted
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to duty.
Indeed, in the conscientious discharge of that duty he died upon the field of
Shiloh in a moment of victory, when I firmly believe had he lived but half an hour longer,
Grant would have been a prisoner.
I loved him so that I dare not trust myself to speak of him as my heart would prompt me. As I have said on another occasion, when he came to us it appeared to me that a great pillar had been put under the
Confederacy; and when he fell on the field of
Shiloh, that ruin stared before us.
You have heard how he was left without a command in
Mexico; and yet
General Zachary Taylor, the best judge of human nature I ever saw, said that
Albert Sidney Johnston had more sterling qualities than any officer he knew.
I know not why it was; but I suppose that in those days, as in these, men were taken not so much for their capacity as for their position in some political organization.
I do not know how we shall ever correct that; the civil service reform, I am afraid, will not do it. I will not detain you, my friends.
1 am sure there is nothing I could say to you that you do not feel or know of the great man whom you have assembled here to-day to honor.
Thanks be to your generous natures, that bring you annually to decorate the graves of the
Confederate dead, that has caused you to erect two monuments to two great Confederate leaders.
And now you are about to erect a third.
Very few eras of history have been marked by great soldiers.
It is seldom that a generation produces one; but I think I may defy criticism when I say that the
Confederacy had three great soldiers—three who would compare with the greatest soldiers of ancient or modern times.
Struggling as they were without the proper means of carrying on the war —fighting, I may say, the whole world without arms—when the history of it all shall be truly written it will show the greatest record of human resistance, of the power of intellect to combat matter, that the world has ever seen.
