Ground to be deeded.
A lot surrounding this stone is to be deeded by the owners of Ellwood estate to the Ladies' Southern Memorial Society to be held in trust forever for the sacred uses and objects for which this memorial was erected, believing this society to be the best custodian for the battle monuments of the South. The writer is not of the number of those who so rejoice in a reconstructed and restored Union that they are ever singing paeans for a centralized Government being established by a subversion of our dearest constitutional rights and liberties, but sees in the spontaneous erection of these simple monuments to perpetuate truth, valor and patriotism the evidence that the spirit which animated the heroes of old still burns in the hearts of their children. Some one has rightly said that ‘a country without monuments is a country without a history,’ to which we would add that a country without heroes in her past, remembered, revered and loved in her present, is without hope for her future.hope. Wilderness, Spotsylvania county, Va., September 10, 1891.
