Southern Historical Society Papers, Volume 16.
Reverend J. William Jones, Ed.

We who, in the providence of God, have been spared to the present hour, as survivors of the war, are in a position to do much to vindicate the motives and to secure historic justice for the deeds of constancy and courage of the men of Virginia, who, on the side of the South, met that tremendous shock of arms. We have emerged from the era of deeply-excited prejudices and heated passions, when the actions of our people were so readily misrepresented and their motives impugned. The calmer feelings of the present day, and the cooler judgments of the people, are more favorable to the establishment and perpetuation of the truth as regards the motives and the achievements of men who toiled and struggled under the banners of the South.

In their calmer and more sober days, the facts are coming to light that will be accepted in future years as the honest verdicts of history, and the temper of the public mind, and the spirit of legislative assemblies, both State and national, make the present era specially favorable for the survivors of the struggle on either side to aid in securing for coming ages a faithful record of their names, their principles, and their deeds; as men who trod the fiery paths of danger in deference to what they honestly felt to be a patriotic duty.

As regards our cause in general, we feel no apprehension that history will not ultimately vindicate the integrity of its principles and aims. The disasters which befell it, and the early overthrow to which Providence and ‘overwhelming numbers and resources’ consigned it, have cast a shadow over its history, and will, for a time, obscure its principles and the grounds of its being. There will exist honest differences of opinion as to the justness of its claims and the wisdom of its policy. Let this, however, be said of the Confederacy, that in the hour of its overthrow, its chief leaders pleaded in vain for a trial on the charge of treason. There was no tribunal to be found that would, by solemn judicial action, brand that stigma on their names. The names made most illustrious by association with the Southern cause have commanded the profoundest respect of the civilized world, and those who opposed them in battle have vied with others in doing homage to their private worth and public virtue. In the integrity and virtue of the men who upheld that cause as the pillars of its strength, and in the purity of the women who sustained it with their prayers and lamented it with their tears, let us behold the