Southern Historical Society Papers, Volume 26., chapter 1.11

Home Collections/Texts Perseus Catalog Research Grants Open Source About Help

Hide browse bar Your current position in the text is marked in blue. Click anywhere in the line to jump to another position:

This text is part of:

19th-Century American

View text chunked by:

chapter : section : page
chapter : page

To the Confederacy's soldiers and sailors. Monument Unveiled on Capitol Hill, Montgomery, Alabama, with impressive ceremony, December 7, 1898.

Instructive and eloquent speeches by prominent men. Southland Moans for its heroes. Reverence and patriotism guiding spirits of the occasion.

Splendid oration by Ex-Governor Thomas G. Jones, with inspiring addresses by Colonel W. J. Sanford, Colonel J. W. A. Sanford, Captain Ben. H. Screws, and Hon. Hilary A. Herbert.

Historic tribute of Alabama women.

Five thousand earnest persons yesterday witnessed the unveiling of the Confederate monument on Capitol Hill. Close to the historic structure in which the ‘Lost Cause’ was born, a marble shaft now rears aloft its figured crest in impressive tribute to those who died under the ‘Stars and Bars.’ Cradle and tombstone stand side by side. And around them, their leafless branches murmuring a requiem mass in the autumn breezes, tremble a hundred trees transplanted [182] from battle-fields where Confederate soldiers fought and fell.

From a period of dreary, rainy weather, yesterday dawned crisp and clear as if nature had lent her auspices to the unveiling ceremonies. Visitors had come to Montgomery from all over the South to witness the exercises. The Ladies' Memorial Association had arranged an impressive programme and nothing occurred to mar its rendition.

Tasteful floral decorations had been arranged around the pedestal of the monument, and benches were erected for the accommodation of 2,000 persons. But the assemblage that had gathered at noon stretched from the northern wing of the capitol to the northernmost edge of the hill.

The bright colors of the women's gowns, the crimson sashes and immaculate white dresses of the pretty sponsors and the gaudy trappings of the militia combined in lending to the situation a gala aspect. But the solemnity of the occasion was breathed in the speeches of the orators, was reflected in the earnest faces of the gathering and was told all too plainly by the purposes of the programme.

Now and then something occurred to stir to enthusiasm the aching hearts of grizzled veterans who had assembled to pay homage to the memory of dead comrades. Some telling phrase in an oration or an irresistable bar from ‘Dixie’ would bring to these mourning patriots a fancy of ‘those other days.’ At such moments, tears glistened in sad eyes or the ‘rebel yell’ resounded.

On the temporary platform, erected between the capitol and the monument, were stationed the members of the Ladies' Memorial Association, members of the Legislature, Governor Johnston and members of his staff, and other prominent persons. The pedestal of the monument itself was tastefully garnished with ferns and chrysanthemums. Long before noon, Capitol Hill was rich in color with the dresses of several thousand women. The spectators experienced some disappointment over a delay in the parade. But their patience did not desert. It was a good natured crowd. Many of the spectators stood uncomplainingly for three hours, straining their ears for phrases from orators who were concealed from view.

The parade.

From the corner of Bibb and Moulton streets, the parade made its way out to Commerce street, thence to Dexter Avenue to the Capitol, [183] and then around the hill. The crowd around the monument greeted the head of the procession with cheers as it hove in sight.

It was after 12 o'clock when Colonel W. J. Sanford, of Opelika, the chairman, in a few appropriate sentences, introduced Rev. Dr. George B. Eager to open the exercises with a prayer. Dr. Eager delivered an eloquent invocation, as follows:

Almighty God, our Heavenly Father, Thou hast taught us to cherish our yesterdays, to “ call to remembrance the former days,” even though they be days of darkness wherein we endured a great fight of affliction. Standing to-day under the shadow of a great loss, but in the light of Thy love, we realize that it is greatly wise to commune with our past hours. We come to recall our precious and immortal dead who poured out their lives as a holy libation upon the altar of their country, verily believing that they were doing God's service. O come to consecrate this completed and enduring monument to the memory of those whom we loved, and cherish for their lofty devotion to duty and fidelity even unto death; who laid the heart of the South at the feet of God with their wounds to tell the story.
Help us, O God, to come in faith and with fit speech, remembering that Thou art God over all blessed forevermore, that Thy kingdom ruleth over all, that Thou sendest the darkness as well as the light, and that Thou hast given us “songs in the night.” We pray Thee to imbue us with the spirit that actuated them and made their lives glorious, to help us to cherish the principles for which they died, and teach us in Thine own wise way the lessons of this hour and occasion. We recognise that Thy wisdom is higher than ours, and that Thy burning and purifying love is ever at work illuminating our ignorance, consuming the dross of our earthliness and bringing out the gold of character which is our true riches. Thou hast given us the grievous discipline of defeat and tears, Thou hast carried us through a, long, hard schooling in a school where everything was difficult and there was constant clashing with our will. It has been bitter and hard upon us, O God, and often when we sought light and help it seemed at such cloudy distances that we could not realize its ministry. But we bless Thee, O, Thou God, of infinite wisdom and love, that by faith we have learned at last that all is well because Thou hast done it, that behind a frowning providence Thou did'st hide a smiling face.
We bless Thee for a reunited country, for the loving hearts, the [184] ministering hands, the loyal souls, and the beautiful voices that remain to us to-day, true to Thee and to duty, for young and old gathered here to-day to take loving and tearful and hopeful part in this new consecration. Be with those who shall speak to us, and may they speak such words as shall help us and glorify Thee; and to Thy great name, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, we will give the praise forever. Amen.

Chairman Sanford opened the oratory in this language:

Ladies of the Memorial Association, Ladies and Gentlemen.

Borrowing an idea from another, if expression of my appreciation of being selected as chairman on this occasion, were commensurate with the honors conferred on me, I should need a full measure of gratefulness in my heart and brilliancy on my tongue. The measure of gratitude is not lacking, but my stammering speech compels me to ask these good ladies who have thus honored me to be content with the assurance that I mean all that is expressed by the good old Anglo-Saxon words, I thank you for having given me this distinction; for, indeed, it is an enviable distinction to be prominently connected with these exercises, that will take their place in the annals of this State, both because of their intrinsic interest and worth, and because they transpire on these historic grounds, where, thirty-seven years ago, a chivalrous young government took its position in line with the great nationalities of earth.

Born in the throes of revolution, its young, proud ship of state was launched on tempestuous political seas, whose angry waves and raging billows rocked its infancy ‘in the cradle of the deep.’ No friendly beacon light streamed across the stormy waters to give warning where maelstroms endangered and rocks were submerged. Rather instead, from storm tossed waves there flashed the lurid glare of the lightning of battle, and the deep, bellowing thunders of war clouds came ‘sounding o'er the sea.’ The dew was not off the grass on the natal morn of the Confederacy before this sunny land was one vast martial camp, and war's frowning visage darkened the land.

It is not for me, to-day, to speak of the causes of the great revolution, nor to discuss the statesmanship and policies of that stormy era. But I will take a moment to say, in defense of those whose honor and valor are commemorated by that granite shaft, that they offered their lives, living sacrifices on the altars of country, in defense of that glorious product of this western world, the great right of [185] local self-government, and in defense of the principles of the American Constitution.

Such sentiments are no detraction from the position of the Federal soldier—the differences are not under discussion now—much less are they disloyal to the sentiments of a restored union and to a common flag. That flag is now the flag of my country and your country, and beneath its shadow the interests and honor of all sections of this grand country repose in security.

This is not the superserviceable cant, that considers it necessary to degrade the memory of the Confederate States, in order to exalt the Union—or to deify the New by anathematizing the Old South; sentiments born of that inspiration that ‘crooks the pregnant hinges of the knee, that thrift may follow fawning.’

“The old South” needs no defense before a Southern audience. For more than a half century of the history of this government, the grand men of the Old South, on the battle-fields of chivalry, illustrated the loftiest valor, and in the parliamentary tourney they magnified statesmanship—while Southern women, worthy mates of splendid men, reigned with queenly dignity in Southern homes, and dispensed that royal hospitality that has been the theme of poesy and ‘the toast of history.’

To others more competent than I have been assigned the agreeable duty of speaking of the valor and virtues of the Confederate dead. They will tell of the splendid generalship of the chieftans of the South. How the names of her Lees, her Johnstons, of Davis, of Stonewall Jackson, of Gordon and a host of other great captains, by the blaze of battle were photographed on the fore-front leaf of fame. How Jeb Stuart and Forrest and Alabama's own gallant Wheeler and Clanton and others led their ‘rough riders’ into the very jaws of death and immortality.

But they will be neglectful if, in these memorable exercises, they forget him who carried the knapsack and musket, the bright boy who bowed his head for a father's blessing and took his shield from a loving mother's hand with the Spartan injunction: ‘With this when the battle's won, or on it from the field’—the young father, who gently unlocking loving arms of wife and weeping children, turned his back on the happy home, on the vine clad hills, and took up his steady, stately march down the road to duty and to death, and by his glorious courage made a faded ‘gray jacket’ a priceless heirloom in the homes of the South.

Yea, more, the tongues of Southern men will forget their cunning, [186] when we fail to tell that the beauty of roses paled and ‘morning sunbeams cast shadows’ in presence of the bloom on the cheek and the light in the eye of the homespun clad girls of Dixie.

Some years ago I had the honor to offer some remarks at the opening of the bazaar, inaugurated by the ladies of the Memorial Association to further the erection of this splendid monument. For years without remuneration or recompense other than the consciousness of a noble duty, these noble ladies have been working for this good day.

Somewhere I have read ‘that it is more blessed to give than to receive.’ That Divine utterance had a sacred illustration when Woman anointed the head of the Saviour, and washed his feet with her tears, and wiped them with her hair.

Humanity, I speak reverently, can make no nearer approach to it, than woman's sacrifice on the altar of unselfish devotion.

The gentle footpace, the soft touch, the tender words—oil on grieving wounds—the balm of consolation to breaking hearts, have enshrined the names of Florence Nightingale and Clara Barton in the hearts of humanity.

So, inspired by generous impulse, these noble women of the Memorial Association have enshrined in granite and bronze, the memory of the Confederate dead; that memory will be green when granite has crumbled and bronze has corroded, around the apex of that splendid shaft, kissed by the first rays of the rising sun, there will forever linger a halo, in memory of the loving hands that reared this shaft and of the unselfish devotion that inspired it. They have reared a noble monument to the memory of the Confederate dead, and in doing so, have safely perpetuated their own glorious memory and worth.

At the conclusion of Colonel Sanford's eloquent words, Miss Gorman sang ‘Dixie,’ in a sweet voice, to the accompaniment of the Second Regiment band.

Ex-Governor Jones's Address.

Then Colonel Sanford turning to ex-Governor Thomas G. Jones, the orator of the day, introduced him in eulogistic terms to the veterans present, it seemed peculiarly meet that he was the orator. One of the youngest officers in the Confederacy, a bearer of one of the flags of truce at Appomatox, few if any, Alabamians were more entitled to the honor accorded him yesterday. Ex-Governor Jones said: [187]

Revered Women and Fellow Countrymen.

Deep and indefinable emotions and throngs of stern and tender memories stir our hearts, and fill our souls and minds, as we stand upon this sacred and historic spot, and drink in the sublimity and significance of this august hour. No tongue can give fit expression to your exalted thoughts, and my lips had been dumb but for the command laid upon me by those whom no comrade of the dead dare disobey, to speak some words for them, ere this monument is committed to the keeping of time and future generations.

Who to-day can forget that other day, when the man whose only sin was we made him leader, was borne in triumph by the love of his people, from his home by the sea to his old Capitol, while the world looked on, and learned that the people for whom he suffered had neither forgotten nor deserted him, in the hour of adversity. What orator or painter can depict the thrilling moment when the aged prisoner of Fortress Monroe, erect, unfettered, sustained by the love of his people, amidst the thunders of cannon and the acclaim of the multitude, laid the corner-stone of this monument, erected here by authority of a State, while the troops saluted with rolling drums, drooped colors and presented arms, and veterans and people, heads all bare, did him honor.

There was one, above all others, who did him reverence, then. Who that saw her at that supreme moment, can shut out vision of the winsome daughter at his side? This tender shoot of his own vine, child of his exile and retirement, had not known the people's hearts. As the full meaning of the scene burst upon her, the glorious face of this fair young girl, lit with filial love, grew brighter and brighter, until a halo shone about her, and she seemed transformed to a seraph, and we forgot that we looked upon a daughter of men. Even yonder dingy old building caught the inspiration, and shone from dome to pit with renewed whiteness, as it reflected back, in the April sun, the purity of that sweet picture of noble womanhood.

There comes before us again the loved form of the man, of big heart and great brain, who was Alabama's governor during the stormiest years of her existence. We recall his manly face suffused with tears, when his chief lovingly placing his hands upon him, told how he had learned to lean upon him, in the sad days at Richmond, ‘When Alabama took him from me there was none to take his place.’

There was another knightly soul moved to tears then—for beside [188] these two stood the chivalrous soldier, who as governor of our State then enjoyed the reward of a long life spent in her service.

These four were on the platform then. Now ‘they gaze into the face that makes glorious their own,’ amid throngs of angels. God rest them; but we cannot keep back the cry—

Oh, for the touch of a vanished hand,
And the sound of a voice that is still.

The monument is partly the gift of the State, and yet it had not risen here, to sentinel the memory of our dead, but for the love and sacrifice of woman, who dared all the danger and sorrow of the strife and shared none of its wild joys—woman who never murmured, save when her warrior lost faith—‘woman, permitted to bruise the head of the serpent and sweetly infuse through the sorrow and sin of earth registered curse, the blessings which mitigate all—born to nurse, to sooth, to solace, to help and heal.’

Chiselled on the face of the monument, but more deeply graven on the soul of time, stand out ‘1861-1865.’

We have reared it as an appeal to the ages. We have placed it here as a defender of the patriotism and virtues of more than one hundred thousand soldiers. It is a tribute by a generation that is here, to a generation that has gone. It would not be in keeping with its great design, to put forth such a work with bated breath. When we ask the world to look upon the statues, we challenge judgment; and we cannot be silent.

Many a child has read that those whom these statues represent died ‘in rebellion,’ and sometimes—sad to say—has heard it from the lips of men sprung from the loins of the dead soldier, that the motives and sacrifices of the men of ‘1861-1865,’ were the mad folly of misguided fathers, who waved hostile battle-flags against the genius of liberty in the New World, and sought to overthrow the great principles for which the Forefathers battled in the Revolution.

Is this true? Did the Confederate give his land to ruin and his children to slaughter because of his devotion to the institution of African slavery? Did he cease to value the principles of union, or to take pride in the great republic which his forefathers did so much to create, and in after times, to cherish and defend? Were the principles of the new government set up here in anywise hostile to the genius of the constitution and government, which Washington set up? Did the men of 1861-865 ‘rebel?’

[189]

The South did not rebel.

The impartial voice of history will declare that the Southern States in asserting the Constitutional right of secession, did not enter upon ‘rebellion,’ or create a new doctrine, but followed the logic of the history of the Constitution, and interpretations of that instrument by some of the most illustrious of the fathers, maintained, regardless of section, at different times, by many of the foremost statesmen of the republic.

All know that the revolution wrung from the mother country the solemn recognition of the ‘thirteen United States of America,’ and ‘each of them,’ as ‘free and independent States.’ They and ‘each of them’ then became possessed of absolute sovereignty. As ‘free and independent States,’ each acting for its sovereign self, they formed the Confederation, and then, by virtue of the same sovereignty as States, formed the Union.

We need not detail subsequent history, and the numerous debates which have exhausted argument, except to say that the public mind vibrated like a pendulum between two opinions at different eras of the republic, as to the power and rights of the States.

If we may judge by the action of the people of the United States, for a considerable period after Washington's death, a majority of them believed the Constitution ‘a compact to which the States were parties, and that, as in all other cases of compact between parties having common judges, each party has an equal right to judge for itself, as well of the infraction as the mode and measure of redress.’

The Virginia and Kentucky resolutions which proclaimed this doctrine were written respectively by Madison and Jefferson; and the latter, though not avowing his authorship, was known to concur fully in them. These resolutions were immediately denounced by some of the States as ‘inflammatory and pernicious.’ Yet Jefferson, in a bitter struggle between the opposing ideas, two years afterwards, was elected President of the United States, and then re-elected in 1804; and his successor was Madison, upon whose motion a proposed clause in the Constitution ‘authorizing the exertion of the force of the whole against delinquent States,’ was unanimously postponed. Madison, who scouted any idea of any government for the United States, ‘framed on the supposed practicability of using force against unconstitutional proceedings of a State.’

Even Hamilton had said, ‘to coerce a State was one of the maddest projects that was ever devised. * * * But can we believe [190] that a State will ever suffer itself to be used as an instrument of coercion? The thing is a dream. It is impossible.’

Massachusetts, not South Carolina, first stood sponsor for the right of secession. Nearly half a century before the convention at Charleston, another convention at Hartford had proclaimed secession as a rightful and desirable remedy against Federal grievances.

The impartial observer in 1861, however deep his opposition to the views of Madison and Jefferson, must declare, as did John Quincy Adams, a New England President, when combatting them: ‘Holding the converse with a conviction as firm as an article of religious faith, I see too clearly to admit denial, that minds of the highest order of intellect and hearts of the purest integrity of purpose have been brought to different conclusions.’

War not fought over the justice or morality of slavery.

The sectional dissensions, which finally took on the shape of disputes over slavery, turned not at all on the rightfulness or morality of the institution; but were of a purely political significance. From the beginning, the Southern colonies had been foremost in resisting the establishment of slavery. Maryland, North Carolina and Virginia had often protested against it. Virginia, prior to 1751, had passed more than twenty-five acts discouraging and preventing it. The Georgia colony at the outset had declared opposition to the institution. Slavery was established and continued in the Southern colonies against their wishes by the avarice of the Crown.

At the time of the Revolution, the institution was upheld in all the colonies, and though nearly one-sixth of their population were slaves, neither slavery nor its morality even remotely entered into the principles or causes which produced the separation from the mother country, or the change from the articles of confederation to the new Union. When the Constitution was formed, the only differences regarding slaves were as to the manner of their representation, and whether an immediate stop should be put to their importation. The Constitution protected the institution, and gave it its sanction.

As the different sections grew in population, commerce and industry, and their interests conflicted, each struggled to control the government which affected those interests. The clause in the Constitution, allowing three-fifths representation for the slaves naturally caused the South to seek to save the balance of power in the formation of new slave States, and the North, on the other hand, to prevent it, just as in our times, with slavery out of the way, the [191] admission of a new State is sought or opposed, mainly with reference to its effect upon party or sectional ascendancy. Thus the institution, regardless of its morality or justice, after a while became the plaything of fanatics and the foot ball of politics.

It is significant, as showing the estimate of the institution in the North as a moral question, when disconnected from political ends, that for over a quarter of a century after the acquisition of Louisiana, the mere discussion of abolition caused outbreaks against those who agitated it, in New York, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire and Connecticut. A Northern historian says: ‘The riots, of which the foregoing were specimens, were too numerous and widespread to be even glanced at separately.’ The same writer, himself an early abolitionist, speaking of the responsibility for the existence of the institution, declares: ‘It were absurd to claim for any colony or section a moral superiority in this regard over any other.’

No purpose of emancipation was announced until the war had long been flagrant, and then the matter was handled as a mine in the heart of the Confederacy, to be exploded or not, as might prove most advantageous in the conflict of arms. General Hunter, early in the war, proclaimed emancipation in certain States, and Lincoln, in his own words, ‘repudiated the proclamation.’ In his special message in 1862, asking Congress to pass a resolution that the United States ought to give pecuniary aid to the States ‘which may adopt gradual abolishment of slavery.’ Lincoln urged it ‘as one of the most efficient means of self-preservation,’ upon the ground, that if by means of such action, some of the border States should adopt it, it would deprive the Southern States of all hope of retaining them in the Confederacy. ‘To deprive them of this hope,’ he says, ‘substantially ends the rebellion.’

In another State paper, about the same time, he said: ‘If I could save the Union without freeing any of the slaves, I would do it. If I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that. My paramount object is to save the Union, and not either to save or destroy slavery.’

The first proclamation was an announcement of emancipation to be enforced against persons who thereafter continued in arms against the United States. The avowal that a return to the Union would prevent the emancipation of the slave, sapped its motive of any just claim to benevolence. The purpose of the proclamation was to conquer, not to free. It was a trumpet blast warning of sterner strife, in whose shrill tones were not blown the sweeter notes of philanthropy. [192] When proclaimed, it was justified as a thrust at an armed enemy, and declared ‘to be warranted by the Constitution, upon military necessity.’ It did not include Maryland, Kentucky or Missouri, and expressly excluded portions of Louisiana and a third part of the State of Virginia.

The institution, though in the beginning the North as little as the South, had designed it, was shot down in the angry strife between the sections, like the sturdy oak, between the lines, by bullets sped at other marks, in the ‘bloody angle’ at Spotsylvania.

It is just as absurd to say that the war was fought over the justice or morality of slavery, as it would be to declare that the conflict with the mother country, was a dispute about tea thrown overboard in Boston harbor.

How the Southerner viewed slavery.

The Southerner was as much concerned with the moral aspects of slavery as any of his countrymen. As late as 1831, Virginia, by the narrow margin of one vote, failed to disestablish the institution—a result due more to assault without, than to support of the institution within the ancient commonwealth. Even under the unfavorable conditions existing in 1861, the number of manumissions in proportion to slaves, was largely on the increase in the Southern States. The ultimate fate of the institution, if it had been left to the South in the earlier half of the century—uninfluenced by assault from without—can only be told by that Providence which left the Southerner no alternative but to maintain the institution against any sudden change, or else confront in his own home, the gravest problem known to government and civilization.

Violent or quick disruption of the relation between the races, would involve both in long misery. If the freedman left the country who was to take his place? If he remained what was to be the outcome? How would the civilization of the white man pulsate with the intermingled aspirations and voice of the black man? Lincoln thought of this, and the remedy for it ‘in room in South America for colonization?’ The Southerner knew it would be impossible to induce or force the migration of millions of people, not living together in tribal relations in a separate territory of their own, but interwoven with the whole social and economic fabric and scattered over a vast country, under the same government with the white population. This was the momentous problem, involving his hearthstone, his honor, and his posterity, in comparison with which slavery [193] was not to be considered, which alarmed the Southerner for the future of his children and his happiness and peace in the union. The sections had grown more and more to mistrust each other. Finally a President had been elected by a sectional majority in the electoral college, who had declared that the country ‘could not exist half slave and half free.’ Then it was, not undervaluing union, but despairing of hope of longer living in peace and honor under the union of his fathers, the Southerner, in obedience to the instincts of self-preservation and the teachings of a lofty courage, declared that he would‘depart in peace,’ and that denied him, would stake all upon his sword. That was denied him, and then came the gun at Sumter, and then the Confederate soldier.

The odds.

The hostile sections had a common border of a thousand miles, stretching from the Atlantic ocean to the western limits of Missouri, everywhere easily crossed by armies. The South had over three thousand miles of sea-coast, without a ship to guard it; while the North had a navy which could attack this coast at pleasure, and often co-operate on rivers with invading armies in grand inland operations.

The Confederate soldier was fighting for his home, which gave him a decided moral advantage. He operated generally in his own country, which gave him a great military advantage, all the fruits of which he could not reap; since he fought men of the same race, speaking the same language, who often had ‘men to the manner born’ in their ranks. He also had the advantage of moving on interior lines, which was largely neutralized by wretched transportation facilities, in his sparsely settled territory, and his opponent's command of the sea, and some of our great rivers. In all things else, the Confederate was at a fearful disadvantage.

His government was new, without credit, and confronting an old, established power. In men, ships and all that enters into the equipment, comfort and supply of armies, the odds against him were appalling. The official records show that the North enlisted throughout the four years of the war, two million, seven hundred and seventy-eight thousand men—while the South according to the best estimate, could not muster quite eight hundred thousand men. Of the three million, five hundred thousand combatants engaged in the struggle, nearly two million more fought on the one side or the other.

Dependent wholly on agriculture, the South went with naked valor [194] to battle, relying on the devotion and genius of its people to work out, with the scant mechanical appliances in its borders, the great problem of war.

Our fields were white with cotton, and we had our flocks; but there were not enough factories to make cloth, and the soldier was always ragged, and often naked. Our granaries and fields in the interior were full of corn and wheat and provisions, and we had our cattle and hogs; but there were no shops or rolling mills to replace and repair our worn engines and rails, and the dilapidated railroads could not meet the wants of communities-much less supply the need of war, whereby the movement of armies was blocked, and soldiers at the front starved, while there was plenty in the rear. Tanning establishments were so few, that the authorities often had to choose between shoes for the soldier and harness for the artillery and waggons. Even when the former was preferred to the latter, it was often impossible to keep the men shod. Medicines and surgical instruments were early declared contraband of war, and there was no place in the South where they could be made. It became difficult to obtain the most common surgical instruments and the Confederate surgeon frequently fought fever and wounds, without opiates, quinine, or chloroform. Paper became so scarce, and skilled laborers so few, that the Government could not print even its paper promises fast enough to pay its soldiers. Methods hitherto unknown, were availed of to procure nitre. Salt largely disappeared, and, toward the end, sugar, coffee and tea were almost as rare as diamonds. Indeed, the blockade soon reduced the armies and people of the South almost to a state of nature, as regards the necessities and comforts of a civilized condition.

The North, on the contrary, was filled with mines, factories and looms, and had a vast country untouched by the track of the invader, from which to draw supplies and men. A wonderful merchant marine transported from across the seas, everything that the wealth and ingenuity of man could devise for the equipment, comfort and supply of its armies, and the luxury of its people at home.

The Confederate soldier in Battle.

The exaltation which came to the Confederate with the first passionate rushing of arms, and the delirium which followed the victory at Manassas, gave way to a higher consecration to duty during the fall and winter months, as there came to his ears notes of the gigantic [195] preparations of the invader, sounding everywhere along our borders.

An enormous flotilla and powerful army were gathering in the West, to repossess the upper Mississippi and the Tennessee. Another army and fleet were organizing for descent on the coast of North Carolina. Still another powerful army and fleet were being collected to assault New Orleans. Nearly 200,000 men, superbly equipped and disciplined, lay around Washington, ready to spring upon Richmond when the roads hardened, while auxiliary armies threatened it from over the mountains and up the Valley. Other forces and fleets were in readiness to move on Savannah and Charleston, while all the energy of the powerful North reinforced its armies in Missouri and Arkansas to aid in the descent on Mississippi. The Confederacy was to be cut in twain, and its capital and chief cities wrestled from it, by a simultaneous concentration of numbers and blows from every quarter. The giant Goliath not more despised the shepherd boy David, with his sling and stone from the brook, than did the North the meagre forces which the South could gather to oppose it.

Early in the spring, the clouds burst Donelson was stormed, Nashville and Columbus were evacuated, Sydney Johnston was driven from Kentucky, and Tennessee Island No.10 was surrendered, Roanoke and Newberne were captured, New Orleans was lost. An army had started for the heart of Mississippi, Vicksburg was attacked, Charleston and Savannah were threatened. The great army of the Potomac forced its way in sight of the spires of Richmond.

When the year ended, three invading armies had been routed in the Valley. The splendid army which essayed to capture Richmond, beaten in a week of battles before that city, fled down the Peninsula, only to meet defeat again, when united with another army on the Rappahannock; and these two armies reinforced, fought a drawn battle in Maryland, and returning to Virginia again met a crowning and disastrous repulse at Fredericksburg. The victor at Donelson had nearly lost his army at Shiloh. The invaders of Mississippi had been compelled to withdraw, and the assailants of Vicksburg had been beaten off. The victorious Federals in North Carolina had been withdrawn to be engulfed in the vortex of defeat in Virginia. A triumphant Confederate army marched through Tennessee and Kentucky, gathering and retiring with the richest spoils of war, drove back its assailants in Kentucky, and as the old year faded into the new, delivered a stunning and bloody blow at Murfreesboro. [196] Minor operations on this extended theatre had generally redounded to the glory of the Confederate arms, and New Orleans only escaped their reconquering grasp that year, because the navy which held it could not be attacked by land. The world stood amazed and awed at these mighty results.

Even the posterity of the Confederate soldier does not realize his work to this day. It is said ‘the voice of the stranger is like to that of posterity,’ and from the stranger in strange lands came wonder and admiration. The most powerful organ of public opinion in Europe declared:

The people of the Confederate States have made themselves famous. If the renown of brilliant courage, stern devotion to a cause, and military achievements almost without parallel, can compensate for the toil and privations of the hour, then the countrymen of Lee and Jackson may be consoled amid their sufferings. From all parts of Europe, from enemies as well as friends, comes the tribute of admiration. When the history of this war is written, the admiration will doubtless become deeper and stronger; for the veil which covered the South will be drawn away, and disclose a picture of patriotism, of self-sacrifice, of wise and firm administration, which we can now see only indistinctly; and the details of the extraordinary national effort which has led to the repulse, and almost to the destruction of an invading force of more than half a million of men, will then be known to the world.

The time allotted me will not allow more than a glance at the subsequent campaigns. During the awful struggle for the possession of the opposing capitals during the next two years, the Confederates' cup of glory ran full. In one of these years he fought a tremendous battle in the heart of the North for Washington, and did not allow his powerful enemy to come within five days march of Richmond, and in the other year lit his bivouac fires in sight of Washington, while he defended his capital and another city twenty miles away, in ten months of bloody and successful battle, until the fateful Sunday when the thin line, worn by attrition and starvation, was broken through at last.

He answered defeat at Vicksburg and Gettysburg with victory at Chickamauga, and pushing back the victor of Gettysburg to Centreville, and defying him at Mine Run; and strove with ill-fated and shining valor to regain at Franklin what had been lost at Atlanta. In the long struggle from Dalton to Atlanta, he illustrated the stubborn valor of his race. Ragged, starved, outnumbered, barefooted, [197] without money, in freezing storms, without hope save in the miracles of his valor and the skill of his leaders, he concentrated what he could of scant numbers, and won victory at Kingston and Bentonville, in the vain hope to save North Carolina, and repel the army which had struck at the life of Richmond from its rear. Here he struggled to the last at Blakely and Mobile, and vainly gave his blood at Selma.

One of Lee's last dispatches to Richmond gives the sad picture of the suffering of the troops everywhere:

Yesterday, the most inclement day of the winter, the troops had to be maintained in line of battle; having been in the same condition two previous days and nights. I regret to be compelled to state that, under these circumstances, heightened by the assaults and fire of the enemy, some of the men have been without meat for three days, and all are suffering from reduced rations, scant clothing, exposed to battle, cold, hail and sleet * * Their physical strength, if their courage survives, must fail under the treatment. Taking these facts, in connection with the paucity of numbers, you must not be surprised if calamity befalls us.

The land was filled with graves and mourners, the wounded and sick and despairing. It was harried by armies so that industry was vain, and women and children cried for bread. The sun seemed darkened, and the air was filled with wails. Yet there still rose above disaster, clear-cut and strong, the heroic figure of the Confederate soldier—serene, subordinate, unselfish, uncomplaining—battling with odds, assailed by the fears and wants of those at home—trusting in God, defying fate, and giving all for duty, until the fabric of the Confederacy, which he so long upheld on his bayonets, ‘fell with a crash which resounded throughout the civilized world.’

The return home.

Many a time, in dreams, had this soldier marched back home.

One day, in the long ago, he stood on the outpost beyond the Rapidan. In front, as far as eye could reach, were hostile pickets; and camp fire smoke, banked up in clouds against the sky, told where, like a panther ready to spring, lay, hidden in the forest, a mighty array in blue. Behind him extended a plain back to the river, all tasselled with corn, and streaked with brooks that sped to the river. Beyond the river, grandly rose long fringe of hills, which sloped to the stream, and broke away behind in the woods. There [198] was smoke of camp fires, there; and across the green slopes red clay intrenchments frowned along the fords. Far beyond to the South lay home, and his eyes turned there.

What is this he sees? Artillery withdrawn from the fords? Going in battery on the hills? What harm can it do the enemy there? Soon flash out puffs of smoke, followed by the boom of gun after gun. Then he hears breaking in on the roar, the strains of Dixie, and both drowned by yells fiercer than of men in fight. Then, challenging the gladness of the guns and cheers, as their echoes die away, ring out the martial burst of the ‘Marsellaise.’ Then the roar of human voices hushes; and over the distance steals on his ear the sounds of ‘Annie Laurie,’ and all the bands, with golden tongue, pour out ‘Home, Sweet Home.’

When he lifts his wet eyes again, all is bustle and stir. The wagon trains are packing and moving. Battalion after battalion in gray, with shining steel and blood red flags, breaks from the battle line, and disappears over the hills. Every head of column is turned southward. The hosts in blue are folding their tents, and marching beyond the Blue Ridge.

All the beauty and worth of Virginia await the army at Richmond. Now, the cabinet and congress are standing at the foot of Washington's monument, but the President sits his horse under the spires of St. Paul. The fences around the capitol have been removed. Thousands of lovely women crowd the grounds. The signal for the great review is the firing of the heavy guns on the James; and while the streets yet tremble the band strikes up as the column, with Lee at its head, comes in sight, and when he and the President return salutes, the majestic voice of thousands of freemen, grander than the roar of ocean in storm, sends up one long, unbroken, triumphant hallelujah to the skies. Even the bronze figure looking down from the top of the monument, seems, for the moment, to take on the spirit of the immortal Washington. Pale and careworn, but erect, majestic and triumphant, the President, with Lee by his side, sits his horse, and for hours watches that proud array of ‘tattered jackets and bright muskets,’ and the red flutter of battle smoked flags. The sun sets. The moon rises, gilding anew the statures on the monument, and flooding through the trees, in golden light, lends its own beauty and softness to the mothers and maidens, who linger until the last battalion passes out of sound and sight. [199]

Oh! these were hours when thrilling joy repaid
A long, long course of darkness, doubts and fears—
The heartsick faintness of the hope delayed,
The waste, the woe, the bloodshed, and tears,
That tracked with terror the rolling years.

Next morning the troops start South! The panting locomotive crosses the Chattahoochee, and the Alabama soldier stands again on Alabama soil. Floods and raids have broken the railroad beyond, and the troops must march overland for home.

The morning bugle call to arms is sweeter now than the fox horn's notes, and familiar scenes bring back the sweet days of ‘Auld Lang Syne.’ The soldier is nearing home. His company ends its last march in the woods by the old school-house—almost in site of home. He spreads his blanket near the spring, where he had often played with the boys who would not look on home to-morrow. He cannot sleep, but watches the stars go down, and waits the rosy morn which will hail with its crystal light the blue hill in the distance, and the road winding up its slope to the trees that rustle above his chimney. Early he is on the march. Now, he hears the peals of the village bells ‘sweeter than silver chimes by moonlight.’ Way off he sees the villagers coming out. The band greets them with Dixie. Then faint, then nearer and clearer, wild like the storm, comes back the grander music of long, unbroken, triumphant cheers, drowning bugle and drum. He is in the village now, marching past his own door. He sees the baby held up high in the sister's arms, hears the shout of the old man and boy, and drinks in, at the window, the sweet old face of mother, and the shy fond look of one dearer than sister, watching at the gate. The glad breeze lifts above the ranks the torn flag these women gave him, and twines it with the shining bayonets. He marches under the arch and through lanes of maidens strewing flowers, and then the company halts, and stacks arms in the grove, near the church, where they heard the sermon the day they left for the war. Now from the same church walls, the ‘Te Deum,’ and songs of praise to the ‘Lord of Hosts, to whom all glories are;’ swell upward and thrill the conscious air. Then he goes home, and in sweet communion with those around his fireside, thanks God, with overflowing heart for peace.

Alas it is all the phantom of a dream of the paroled prisoner the night after Appomattox! He has stacked arms, but not before the village church.

On his homeward journey, he hears his leader is chained in a [200] dungeon, and the terms of peace, proclaimed by a Southern-born President, in prosecutions for ‘treason,’ disfranchisement, and confiscation. Then came the temptation to war, forever, in the hedges, by-ways and swamps, ‘until death should better him.’ There came the calm voice of Lee—‘The South requires her sons more now than at any period in her history. I have no thought of abandoning her, unless compelled to do so.’ The weary soldier put aside his thought of vengeance and trudged on home. He found the slave his political master, his home in ruins and his fields in weeds and waste. There was not seed enough to plant a crop, nor work animals enough for the plough. He saw famine kill what war had spared, and strangers sit in judgment seats, while bayonets made law. He was met and cheered by women, and opposing courage and fortitude to oppression and folly, he despised despair, and taught the world ‘how sublime it is to suffer and grow strong.’

Picture of this soldier.

Would that I could draw a picture of this soldier, ‘as he lived moved and had his being.’

Home was his ideal, and wife, mother and sister were his ‘holy of holies.’ They planted, deep in his bosom, the instinct that manhood required he should yield to other women, the respect and deference he demanded for those about his hearthstone. He loved his community; for the hospitality of his roof, took in his community, and good offices of neighbors made them a part of every home.

He was taught respect for authority. The institutions and social customs among which he was reared brought him into association with those he acknowledged as his ‘betters,’ and those who acknowledged him to be their superior. He was thus trained both to obey and command. He came upon the stage at a time of acute political discussion, when not every man esteemed himself a statesman, and followed almost blindly, as his father did before him, some great leader who appeared to him the most fit exponent of his thoughts, and this habit of peace followed him in war.

When he entered the army, his company was the representative of the community, and he of his home. They were with him everywhere—on the march, bivouac, and battle line. His home and community watched his doing and shared his trials. He would as soon have brought disgrace on his own home, or the little village where he expected to return, as to sully his own name, or that of the organization to which he belonged, by rapine, insubordination or any [201] other kind of unsoldierly conduct. He hardly needed Lee's noble order to restrain him in Pennsylvania. He could not disgrace his home by pillage of another's home, or degrade his wife and mother by insulting the wives and mothers of other men. His chivalry taught him to protect the defenceless. Gordon expressed this feeling when he said to the frightened women of the invaded town of York, who feared insult if his ragged troops were permitted to disperse through the town: ‘Have no fear, you are as safe as if your own people were here. My men would not let the man who harmed a women live to see the sun go down.’

It is not strange that this soldier who had such home influences, and received letters by every mail telling him of their prayers for him, should think of prayer for himself and his cause. It is a sustaining thought in the hour of battle, that there is an invisible hand which may be invoked to save and to shield. Whether secretly or openly, the soldier who had gone unscathed in many battles, began to pray for himself, and became resigned to the will of a higher Power. He began to consider himself as a mere instrument in the hands of Providence, and by the very exaltation of his faith and consecration to duty, became possessed of a strange moral and physical strength. He had an abiding faith, amounting almost to fanaticism, that the God of battles would in the end, send his cause safe deliverance.

He was always without money; yet he was never known to beg for money. His month's pay during the last half of the struggle, would hardly buy a dinner, and towards the last, his government was unable to pay at all. Many of the Revolutionary fathers, under less galling circumstances, threatened to leave Washington before Trenton, and could be persuaded to strike the blow there, only upon compliance with their demand, for ‘a bounty of ten dollars, provided it should be paid in hard money,’ for already, says the historian, ‘distrust of the continental currency was beginning to cause its depreciation.’ These same Revolutionary soldiers, even after peace, threatened calamities to the Republic on account of arrears pay, which only the wisdom and firmness of Washington could avert. This Confederate had seen value quickly depart from the Confederate note in which he was paid, until it became perfectly worthless towards the end, yet he never remonstrated with his government, and no thought entered his brain to stay the arm of Lee or Jackson, until he could have a balance struck and settled.

There was an intense spirit of comradeship in this man. There [202] quickly grew up an instinctive order of knighthood amongst such men, in the face of danger, which broke down all these differences of rank and worldly condition, which elsewhere so often prevent the oneness of armies. If an officer was brave, impartial, and cared for his men, this soldier would follow him anywhere, and never complain of the strictness of his discipline. He was a fine judge of men. He elected his own officers, and if a mistake in them, soon found means to weed out the inefficient. He did better in his day by the election of officers, than in this day when they are appointed. Gordon and Rodes are examples of the men whom he selected to lead.

He was a cleanly man, despite his rags. Most of them had sooner parted with a pair of shoes, than a good tooth brush. Who has forgotten the queer sight of the tooth brush sticking from the buttonholes of his jacket; or how, when the blockade exhausted the supply of these, he became an expert in making brushes from dogberry or sassafras? On the march he had no knapsack. If he had change of clothing, he put it within his blanket, rolled it up, tied it at the ends, put the loop over head and shoulders. A canteen, and sometime a frying pan and a jack knife, were all he carried, besides his arms and belt. His pantaloons were tied at the bottom, and thrust inside his shoe. His woolen hat was often his only tent. He was as cheerful as the Indian at the ‘Feast of corn,’ when his only rations were roasting ears. There was philosophy as well as humor, in the remark of the soldier whom his officer rebuked for breaking rank, and going after persimmons, that ‘he needed them to pucker up his mouth so as to fit his rations.’

He was full of humor, jokes and jests. Woe be to the unhappy able-bodied civilian who passed his line—he ran the gauntlet of a fire of gibes more annoying than a nest of hornets.

He was always respectful to women, the minister, and the aged, and would march barefooted in the mud to give the road to a woman and child in a buggy, while he would back an able-bodied man into the fence corner, to get him out of the way.

He was modest withall, and seldom wrote to the papers of his achievements. When he felt injustice had been clone his command, he was apt to believe time would right him, and to say as Jackson did, when his part at Manassas was misrepresented—‘My brigade is not a brigade of newspaper correspondents.’

There was something pathetic in his devotion to his battle-flag. There were seldom even covers for them, and in camp the color-bearer sometimes rolled them up for pillow—but in the battle, it was [203] as the cross to the Crusader, and he would follow wherever any would carry it.

He was not always up on salutes, and the finer points of tactics or guard duty, but in the essentials of marching, fighting and taking care of himself, he had no superior. He knew how to show respect for the officer he loved, and often he would not go forward until his leader went back, in time of danger. His battalion drill may have been somewhat ragged, but his alignment in the charge was magnificent, his fire by file unequaled, and his ‘rebel yell’ the grandest music on earth.

Who that looked on him can ever forget his bright face, his tattered jacket, and battered hat, his jests, which tickled the very ribs of death—his weary marches in heat and cold and storm?—his pangs of hunger, his parching fever, and agony of wounds—his passing away in hospital or prison, when the weak body freed the dauntless soul—his bare feet tracing the rugged fields of Virginia, and Georgia and Tennessee, with stains like those which reddened the snow at Valley Forge—his soul clutching his colors, while suffering and unprotected wife and child cried for him at home—his faith and hope and patience to the end—his love of home, deference to woman and trust in God—his courage which sounded all the depths and shoals of misfortune, and for a time throttled fate—the ringing yell of his onset, his battle anthem for native lands rising heavenward above the roar of five hundred stormy fields?

His antagonist.

While we speak of the Confederate soldier, there rises before us the image of his antagonist, whom none that fought him would ever depreciate. He came at the call of his State, the earthly tribunal before which it was our faith all men should bow.

He believed, and had been reared to believe, that the future of the Republic demanded but one flag between the seas. Not Pickett's charge at Gettysburg, nor Cleburne's at Franklin, outshone in vain but glorious valor, the lustre of the assault at Marye's Heights, and his mad charges at Spotsylvania and Cold Harbor. He had grander courage yet-he did not mock us at Appomattox. Had these men the power to control the peace, the Southern soldier had been spared the hardest of the trials that came to him with the end of armed hostilities.

[204]

We are content in the home of our fathers.

The Past asks what of the Future? We can answer as fearlessly as the dead answered the call on them—we are content in the home of our fathers. Neither fealty to the dead, fidelity to principle, nor any laws of honor or interest, impels us to a different answer. It is important, however, to inquire why this is so.

It is a narrow and dishonoring view that this content comes from defeat and the parole at Appomattox. A new generation has risen since then. Paroles bind the generation which gives them; but neither future generations or great principles can be paroled. There must be surer and better foundation for this content, now, of millions in a government from which, a third of a century ago, they made so many sacrifices to separate, than the memory of parchment which recalls a disaster in arms.

We are Americans, proud of our country and its flag, because Alabama is lord of her own and vassal to none, and our highest hopes of happiness are bound up in the rule of one government of co-equal States under the Constitution, for the North American continent.

Why should it not be so?

When the Confederate furled his flag, no strange flag vexed him. The new banner that rose over his home was the old flag of his forefathers. Every battle-field and glory it recalls is bright with the valor and achievements of his ancestors. When we left, we did not claim the flag, and as it comes back to us now, it stands for no thought at war with our interest, our liberties or our honor, but lifts its folds proudly in the skies of every land, as our protector and defender. Why may we not love it now as the symbol of a reunited land?

If, then, not the flag, is it the feeling between those who dwell under the flag, that should keep our hearts apart? Never was there better understanding and more good will between the sections.

Industry and economic conditions have so changed that Federal legislation rarely presents even a sectional aspect. Hostility and discord between the sections are weaker than ever before, since the sections are juster to each other than ever before. We have our share in glories of the Republic. We have thrilled at the thought of a loved Montgomerian, standing under the broad pennant of the Secretary of the Navy, in an American flag-ship, as it ploughed through the waters of the Chesapeake, and he received the salutes [205] of the navies of the earth. Alabama gave to the country the cavalry leader of the west to win glory at Santiago, at the head of a division of regulars. We have rejoiced at the fame of the Greensboro youth, Alabama's Pelham of the seas, who, rivaling and recalling the daring of that Alabamian who sank the Housatonic in Charleston harbor, sank the Merrimac in Santiago harbor, and then rose in sight of the world. We have watched regiments of our own sons, and wafted prayers with them, as they marched off under the Stars and Stripes.

If slavery was the cause of the war, it has perished in the march of events. Who would bring it back, or war about it now? Its doom was inevitable, as it had served its day in the purpose of the great Creator. That it was fast becoming a very body of death to our advancement and prosperity, is not now denied. It made a wide and ever widening gulf between the man who owned and the man who did not own slaves. It promoted false ideas of the dignity and worth of labor by the white man, and the economic policies which it created, impoverished us, and shut us out from the world. It is far better for us, at least, that it is dead.

It is simple truth, that the institution, as it existed in 1861, was mildness itself compared with its history elsewhere. It was not the slavery of men of our own race, which in substance, though not in name, often haunts civilization elsewhere. The ancestor of the slave did not lose liberty when brought to his master here. The dominion was not based more on force than the ignorance and need for protection of the slave. It is an imperishable tribute to its kindness that throughout a terrible civil war, in which hostile armies traversed a country filled with slaves, they never once rose anywhere in insurrection against their masters. Whether those who, by force of circumstances, maintained it were not as noble as those who, by force of circumstances, opposed it, we may well leave to the calm judgment of posterity, and to the Providence which placed the institution in our midst, with the names of Washington and Jefferson, Madison and Monroe, Marshall and Calhoun, Clay and Crittenden, Davis and Lee, Maury and Manly, and Stonewall Jackson and Stephen Elliott.

But what of the great principles for which we fought? Have we abandoned them? The great substantial, animating principle for which the South struggled was the right of a State to control its own domestic affairs—the right to order its own altars and firesides without outside interference—the right of local sovereignty for which [206] brave people struggle everywhere, and without which there is no peace. Secession itself was a mere incident in the application of this principle. So great was the attachment to the principles of union, and so little was the right of secession cherished in itself, that its assertion was wrung from the South only by the conviction of some States that they could no longer live in the Union in peace and honor, and by the dread alternative presented others by the call from Washington for troops to draw the sword for or against their own flesh and blood.

If the defeated Confederate soldier did not immediately vindicate the right of a State to order its own domestic affairs, even at the expense of Union, neither did the victorious Northern soldier vindicate any principle of Union, without regard to the just rights of the States. I speak not now of that mere physical Union, like the chain which bands Ireland and England, but of that living, breathing soul of liberty, which binds co-equal States in unison of happiness around the common altar of the Constitution.

The Union of the fathers, like the rights of the States, was dead for twelve long years after the war. Neither came back until the heart of the North, better understanding itself and the South, abandoned the dream of force, and President Hayes—to whom I am glad to pay this tribute—speaking in the name of Union, declared that the bayonet could not rule, and ‘the flag should float over States, not Provinces.’ With that, Union came back inevitably, as night follows day, recognition of the great principle that the safety and happiness of the American people and the future of Constitutional liberty, depend not more on Union than on equality of the States, and the right to work out their own destiny around their own firesides; and that one is not complete without the other. This principle, which underlies all real liberty and happiness, stands to-day, thank God, upright and unchallenged in the hearts of the American people. Of a truth, then, we may declare that ‘the grand army of martyrs, which is still marching onward beyond the stars,’ which fought at last, not for secession or slavery, but for the right of a State to govern itself in all that pertains solely to itself, have not died in vain.

“Honor thy father and thy mother, that thy days may be long in the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee”—was written not alone of those whose name and blood we inherit, but as well of generations which have borne the heat and burden of days that are behind us. A people may neglect the command and forfeit the promise [207] as well as the child. Those were brave words of the statesman who said: ‘Society has a soul as well as a body. The traditions of a nation rea a part of its existence—its valor and discipline, its religious faith, its venerable laws, its science and erudition, its poetry, its art, its wise laws and its scholarship, are as much the blood of its life as its agriculture, its commerce and its engineering skill.’ Bursting granaries, wide orchards and fields, rushing locomotives, the whir of spindles, the smoke of furnaces and the white sails of commerce, alone, cannot make a people great. Without manhood and virtue, love of God and native land, no people can become really great or long remain free. These virtues wither and die in the land where the child forgets father, and is unmindful of the heritage of his noble example and sacrifices. We serve humanity and country when we remind the children of the Confederate soldier of his life and achievements.

Alabama should write history.

Our duty is not ended with the building of this monument. Where may an Alabamian find a roll of the men who made history, and yet left no name on its pages? Where can he find the names of the great throng who died, with no rank to attract the eyes of the country, and went down to death, uncheered save by the firm beating of their own dauntless hearts? Can he find his name among the archives of the State for which they gave their lives? They are not there, In historic publications of her heroic sons? She has written none. Will he find them on the graves of the dead? Some have no headstones, and many are marked ‘unknown.’ There is but one sacred spot on earth, where these names are kept. Look in the hearts of our noble women, and there you will find them all. But the gentle lips which said the prayers he could not say, and the white hands which shunned no toil for him, and the pure souls that rose above him with a courage grander than his own, are fast passing away. Almost alone, for thirty-three years, she has guarded the memory of the dead. Her lips have uttered no complaint. Yet one reads in her eyes the wistful thought that the comrades of the dead have not kept full faith with him, when the State for which he died, ruled by his comrades and their children, has not even traced the names of the dead in the chronicles of her history, and leaves the bodies of her dead sons, who perished in prison, far off by the lakes, indebted to the chance kindness of the stranger for the handful of earth and the enclosure that saves them from the beasts of the [208] fields and the birds of the air. Poverty and despair long pleaded to excuse us, but that excuse is not true now. Let the voice of the people ‘throng in and become partakers of the councils of State,’ until the peoples' representatives take away this reproach. It cannot be, as some have urged, that the State which could send over one hundred thousand men to battle and death, may not, under the Constitution for which they fought, rightly expend money for the roll of their names or history of their achievements. It cannot be that the State which can give a money reward to a civil officer for catching a malefactor, cannot give a sword as reward to a soldier for honoring her people in battle. This State were weak, indeed, if so poor in power and right. Long ago, the law was declared in Alabama that the ‘whole, unbounded power’ of man over man, in matters temporal, resides in the government of the State, save as expressly or by necessary implication denied by the State and Federal Constitutions. There is no want of power.

The passing of the Confederacy.

That is a masterpiece—the touching Idyl of the ‘Passing of Arthur.’ The king, beaten in his last battle, and drawing near to death, commanded his knight to take the blade, ‘which would be known wherever he was sung in after time,’ and throw it in the lake. But the knight, believing the king's fame would be hid from the world in after times, if ‘so precious thing should be lost from earth forever,’ feigned obedience, and hid the sword among the water-flags. Then came from the king's pale lips the despairing cry: ‘Woe is me, authority forgets a dying king, laid widowed of his power.’ Shamed to obedience, the knight threw the blade in the lake, and Arthur, when told of the arm that rose up from the mists and caught it, sure it would never again be seen by mortal eyes, ‘passed to be king of the dead.’

Our Arthur passed to the ‘island valley of Avilion’ with no cry on his lips or thought in his heart that ‘authority forgets a king, laid widowed of his power;’ for here the love of a people touched away the scar of the fetters, and crowned him king again. As the monument, whose foundation he laid, crowned in its finished glory with the statues, is about to be committed to the State and Time, we are looking upon the passing of the Confederacy. No ‘arm clothed in white sasmite, mystic and wonderful,’ rises out of earth to bear away our treasures from the sight of men; but here, where the Confederacy was born, and in the presence of God and this multitude, we [209] reverently dedicate to the glory of a common country, and unfold for the benefaction of mankind, the priceless treasure of the life and character of the Confederate soldier.

Colonel Sanford's oration.

To Colonel J. W. A. Sanford had been delegated the privilege of delivering the oration preliminary to the unveiling of the figure emblematic of the Confederate infantry. Upon being introduced by the chairman, Colonel Sanford said:

Mr. President, Ladies of the Memorial Association, Confederate Veterans, Ladies and Fellow Countrymen.

I congratulate the State of Alabama, and I do especially congratulate the Ladies' Memorial Association, upon the early completion of this magnificent monument to perpetuate the memory of the Confederate soldiers and seaman of this grand Commonwealth. It forever memorizes a cordial appreciation of the superb qualities manifested by the Confederate warriors and people during the war between the States.

Its corner stone was laid by the immortal Jefferson Davis, and is a suitable memento of the dead Confederacy. It marks the close of an eventful era, not only in the career of the United States, but also in the history of the world. It defines the limit of a civilization peculiarly Southern, which, in all the attributes that bless and dignify humanity, is the crowning glory of the Christian centuries. The people who established it were characterized by brilliant social gifts and many laudable qualities; by a generous and unstinted hospitality; by pride of race; by a sense of honor which nothing could make them forget; by a conviction that courage was absolutely essential to all true manliness, and that integrity is the fundamental law of society; by a love of liberty and a spirit of independence that no oppression or injustice could destroy. They cherished an ardent devotion to the rights of the State, and an unfaltering allegiance to its authority. They possessed a chivalrous courtesy, and notable deference and delicacy in intercourse with women, who elicited the admiration of the world by their intelligence and purity and modesty and refinement, as by their capability of sacrifice and endurance of privation. It is true that some admirable peculiarities, originating with and inseparable from our condition and system of industry, have gone, like the clouds that Rachel watched by Laban's well, nevermore to be seen by men. This statue, representing the infantry, like the 14 [210] entire structure, is an institution of education dedicated to heroism. It inculcates a love of the State, and shows the honor rendered to men who encounter hardships and dangers for the liberty, independence and power of their country, and commemorates the virtues of valor and patriotism. It will stimulate youths to admire and cultivate ennobling qualities, and to emulate, if they may not excel, the applauded virtues and glorious deeds of their ancestors. They thoroughly understood the limitations of our governments, both State and Federal. They cheerfully yielded to the Union all its constitutional rights and powers, but were intensely jealous of any encroachments by the general government upon the rights of the State. As the Union was first suggested by Southern statesmen, it was supported by their descendants as long as it accomplished the purposes of its formation; but when these were abandoned and the Constitution was disregarded and violated by many States, and was denounced by popular assemblies as a ‘Covenant with death and a league with hell;’ when what was intended to promote peace and tranquillity became an instrument of unfriendly agitation and hostility, the Southern States seceded. The people preferred the Constitution without the Union to the Union without the Constitution. They knew that the Union, unrestrained by the organic law, would be a despotism of intolerable oppression. They knew, also, that the principles of the Constitution, wherever they obtained, secured the rights and freedom of States and of men. Therefore, to preserve them, the Southern States seceded from the Northern States. Secession was conservative of the Constitution, and was a pacific policy. But war ensued. President Lincoln's proclamation, calling for 75,000 men to enforce the Federal laws, was received with derision, and then from the mountains to the sea, from the Potomac to the Rio Grande, upon every wind that blew, rushed the Southern men to arms. Many of them formed a body of infantry, whose character and achievements have been rarely paralleled in the annals of time. No attribute of heroism, which is next to godliness, was wanting to them. They were intelligent, and fully comprehended the magnitude of the conflict and the importance of the interests involved. They knew the necessity of organization, and notwithstanding their impatience of control and stubbornness of will, they readily submitted to the stern and harsh discipline of the army. Although imperfectly equipped and scantily clad, they bore, without complaint, cold and rain and sunshine and storm and sleet and hunger and the painful fatigue of long marches in wearisome campaigns, and the cruelty of barbarous [211] imprisonment and disease and wounds and death. Their patriotism was as broad as the Confederacy, and as unselfish as a mother's love. They had a conviction of the righteousness of their cause that no doubt ever disturbed; a faith in their own invincibility and a confidence in their officers that no disaster could diminish; a manly subordination to authority, and a faithfulness in the discharge of duty seldom equalled; a bravery calm as peace and reckless as fire; and a patience which willingly suffered frost and famine, whose fever gave intensity to their purpose and tireless vigils in long sieges, accompanied by the bursting of bombshells and the incessant rattle of musketry, daytime and night-time, through many tedious months. But it was in the forlorn hope, in the desperate assault upon the enemy's works, or in the steady movement upon his lines, or in the dashing charge upon his guns in the open field, their nature most appeared. Then qualities, which, like the Punic characters upon the sword of the Icelandic chieftan, were invisible in repose, like them, too, in battle and deadly peril, gleamed and glowed with a terrifying resplendence, and obtained, even in defeat, the applause our enemies won only by success. Neither victory nor disaster could materially affect the fame of this enrolled infantry. They did not change their virtues because fortune changed her face.

These were some of the traits of the men, whose lives were as thickly strewn with battles, as their graves are strewn with flowers in spring. They were displayed by this matchless infantry, when it starved in the trenches at Vicksburg; or besieged Cumberland Gap, climbed on the hills at Chickamauga or stormed the breastworks at Franklin; or assaulted the fortifications about Knoxville; or held the lines around Petersburg and Richmond; or stood immovably at Spotsylvania; or repelled the invaders a: Fredericksburg; or drove them to the music of the rebel yell, from the field at Chancellorsville, or charged the heights of Gettysburg. In every position and in all conditions they exhibited to the admiring gaze of the nations, the finest specimens of real, true, genuine manhood, Christian or pagan, the world has ever seen. Of this famous army, Alabama furnished 122,000 men, thirty-five thousand of whom returned no more to their homes. Some of them repose in graves marked unknown, in distant countries. The remains of others are scattered on every mountain height and plain; upon every hilltop and valley, from Gettysburg to where the Mississippi rolls his multitudinous waters to the sea, and around green boughs.

Their unremembered bones do waste away in rain, and dew, and [212] sunshine day by day. To them and their comrades on land and sea, their grateful and bereaved countrymen have erected and now consecrate this monument, although their names may be forgotten and their resting places be neglected, their fame shall never pass away. And

On some day, before his throne,
We will find where God's angels dwell,
They are no more unknown.

And there when, amid the resplendent glories of the supernal world shall be called the roll of the mighty and renowned men who have lived, and labored and suffered, and fought and died for liberty and the advancement of mankind, every Confederate soldier, unrepentant and unabashed, shall answer ‘I am here.’

Miss C. T. Raoul, credited with having fired the gun that proclaimed Alabama's secession, leaning on Colonel Sanford's arm, crossed the space intervening between the platform and the infantryman's statue which was yet concealed under the canvas draping. Jerking the string that held this draping in place, Miss Raoul recited her own beautiful lines that are inscribed under the statue:

Fame's temple boasts no higher name,
No king is higher on his throne,
No glory shines with brighter gleam,
The name of Patriot stands alone.

Captain Screw's eloquence.

The band played ‘My Maryland’ and then came the introduction of Captain Ben. H. Screws. The eloquent diction for which Captain Screws is noted, won for him the closest attention. He spoke as follows:

Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen.

Those who followed glorious young Pelham, that true son of thunder, and his terrible artillery over the hills and through the valleys of Virginia, or went with Pickett and Kemper and Armistead up ugainst the hurricane of fire, lead and iron on Round Top, need no monumental marble, to recall the memories of that thrilling era; and those who through the long and bloody hours hurled themselves against the merciless batteries of Rosecrans on the awful field of Chickamauga, withstood the earthquake throes of Missionary Ridge [213] and Kennesaw, or engaged in the death grapple at Franklin, where the war-gods seemed to scorn to use Jove's counterfeit, and hurled the genuine bolts, need no lettered sculpture to remind them of that struggle of giants. Followers of Lee and Jackson, of Johnston and and Hood, of Stuart and Forrest and Pelham and Semple and Rodes and Lomax, Clanton, Holtzclaw and Clayton your memories need no refreshing. This monument, these figures, that mute suggestion of the dread artillery, of the grape whose iron clusters grew so luxuriantly along the ravines and mountain sides of Virginia and Georgia, of Tennessee and Kentucky, even from Gettysburg to the Rio Grande, and whose juice was the red blood of heroes, that sleeping cannon, recalling the matchless valor of the old South, of the young Confederacy, and reviving memories of the days and nights of unyielding defiance, when towns and cities were awakened by the terrible music of the bursting bomb, when green fields were trampled by the hoofs of the invader, and made red with the blood of your countrymen, all this is but to remind those who come after us, even the generation yet to emerge from the stream of time, of the race from which they sprung.

Alabama's record during the great war between the States, the most stupendous, the most stubborn, and the most chivalric conflict in all the chronicles of time, the brilliant, dazzling, unrivalled deeds of her heroic sons, the deathless patriotism and sublime submission to privations and hardships of her peerless daughters, constitute the brightest diadem in the crown of Alabama's wondrous glory. It would require the master mind of him who portrayed the march of the rebel angels across the north plains of heaven, to tell, in fitting verse, of all they did and dared. Then how inexpressibly dear to us should be the memories of our Confederacy. It sank in sorrow, but not in shame, and far, O! far distant, be the time when we shall cease to cherish these proud, though melancholy recollections.

The Ladies' Memorial Association of Montgomery, heaven bless them! For more than twelve years, with unabating zeal, with ceaseless energy and perseverance, overcoming gigantic obstacles with apparent ease, have labored for the consummation of this holy purpose. Their work is finished, the monument is completed. And now, above all others the survivors of that period of courage, of chivalry and of carnage, wish them to be forever assured that their gentle and devoted remembrance of the dead Confederate soldier touches deeply and falls gratefully upon the hearts of the comparatively few Confederate survivors, and we wish the passing stranger, [214] indeed, all the wide world, to forget not that the first stone of this monumental pile was placed in position by the unsullied hand of the golden-hearted Chief of the Confederacy—peerless, immortal Davis, out upon the shoreless ocean his bark has drifted, and we shall see him no more with our mortal eyes, yet

Millions unborn his mighty name shall sound,
And worlds applaud which must not yet be found.

We wish that whosoever in all coming time shall turn his eye hither, may behold that the place is not undistinguished where young Liberty was cradled, where the Confederacy was born, where the atmosphere all the year round is perfumed with the sad, proud memories of 1861. We wish that this monument may proclaim the magnitude and importance and grandeur and justice of that event to every class and every age; we wish that infancy may learn the purposes of this erection from maternal lips, and that weary and withered age may behold it, and be solaced by the recollections which it suggests. We wish that Labor may look up here, and be proud in the midst of its toil.

Let the stilled cannon sleep on through the ages, faithful reminder of a generation of men the like of which we ne'er shall see again. Let this monument stand, not a record of civil strife, for this great country, let us hope, is sincerely re-united. Let it stand as a perpetual protest against whatever is low and sordid in all our public and private objects. Let it stand for rebuke and censure, if our people should ever fall below the standard of their Confederate fathers. Let this still, solemn testimonial, dedicated to the memory of brave men, of genuine patriots, continue through all time to meet the sun in his coming; may the earliest rays of the morning glorify and gild it, and parting day linger and play upon its summit.

Now, ladies and gentlemen, permit me to discharge the most pleasing part of my duty upon this occasion, to present the accomplished daughter of a noble mother, whose name is revered in every Confederate camp and venerated by every Confederate survivor, the incense from whose gentle and untiring attentions to the sick and wounded, during those long and eventful years, has risen with benedictions and blessings to the great white throne on high. The daughter, inheriting the mother's magnificent traits of character, also embodies within herself all those charming and exalted qualities which are the pride and boast of every Southern gentleman—the noblest thing on earth, a perfect woman, Miss Lena Hausman. [215]

Captain Screws escorted Miss Lena Hausman to the statue, emblematic of the artillery branch of the service.

Miss Hausman, releasing the canvas drapery that enfolded the statue, recited the inscription that is underneath, and which was written by Mrs. I. M. P. Ockenden:

When this historic shaft shall crumbling lie,
In ages hence in woman's heart shall be
A folded flag, a thrilling page unrolled,
A deathless song of Southern chivalry.

“Tenting on the old Camp ground” was creditably rendered by Powell's quartette, and then came the introduction of Hon. Hilary A. Herbert, ex-Secretary of the United States Navy, who had been selected to deliver an oration preliminary to the unveiling of the statue emblematic of the Confederacy.

Hon. H. A. Herbert's speech.

Ladies and Gentlemen and Ladies of the Memorial Association:

I thank you, ladies, for the opportunity given to me, a Confederate soldier, to say a few words for the Confederate sailor. A simple recital of the circumstances by which our sailors were surrounded and mention of a few only of their achievements will be more eloquent than any eulogy I could pronounce.

When the Confederacy was born on this hill in 1861, it had, in a few days, a Secretary of the Navy, a broad-minded, far-seeing, resourceful statesman, Stephen F. Mallory; it soon had many able naval officers—officers who had parted in tears from their comrades in the old navy to follow the call of duty. But the new government had not a naval vessel for its naval officers to command, not a merchant vessel that could be changed into an efficient man-of-war, no ship yard, save one at New Orleans, and that had never built or attempted to build a naval vessel, no shop that could build an engine complete, no foundry that could cast a large sized cannon or a cannon ball. The Federal government had its naval vessels afloat on every sea; it had numerous ship yards, foundries, machinists and machine shops; it had ports open to the world; it had the shipping that did our vast coastwise trade, and the sails of its merchantmen whitened all the great waters of the habitable globe.

All its vessels could be utilized; there were sailors to man them. The task of the Federal government was, with the vast fleets it could [216] command, to blockade our ports, to permeate the rivers that ran through our land, to aid its own armies and protect their lines of supply, to cut communications between Confederate armies and destroy Confederate depots of supply. The water was the weak point of the Confederacy; it was the opportunity of the Federal government.

The task before the Navy Department of the Confederacy seemed utterly hopeless, but true courage never despairs. What was accomplished, if I had time to tell it all, would sound like a tale of fairy land. Confederate genius seemed to have discovered anew the Lamp of Aladdin.

When Virginia added herself to the Confederacy, she brought with her the Tredegar Iron Works, which had never cast a large gun, had never made a naval engine, but had a plant which was a foundation on which to build. Virginia brought also the Norfolk Navy Yard, which was a construction yard; but the few ships at the Norfolk yard which could not be carried away had been burned or scuttled and sunk. And yet, in less than eleven months, the Confederate navy astonished the world. The sunken Merrimac, now the Virginia, had been raised, covered with deflective armor, and, on new lines, reconstructed into the grandest fighting machine that up that day had ever fired a gun in battle.

On March 8, 1862, the Virginia appeared in Hampton Roads, and with her ten guns confronted the Minnesota, the St. Lawrence, the Roanoke, the Congress and the Cumberland, mounting altogether 174 guns. The Congress and the Cumberland were destroyed, and every other vessel that could, sought safety in flight.

That was a glorious day for the new navy of the Confederacy, and a glorious day, too, it was for the old navy of the United States. As the Cumberland went down in the unequal contest, the Stars and Stripes still floated from her mast, and her guns still thundered and sent their useless missiles against the impenetrable sides of the Virginia, until they were enveloped in the water.

While dedicating this monument, which is to tell to future generations the story of Confederate valor, let us, as we recall the memories of that combat, recall also the fact that all who are entitled to share in the glories of that day are our countrymen. Buchanan and Catesby Jones and Littlepage and others who fought the Virginia, and the gallant officers and men of the Congress and the Cumberland—they were Americans all, and the memory of the illustrious [217] deeds of the 8th of March, 1862, is the common heritage of what is now our common country.

On the 9th was the fight between the Virginia and the Monitor, a drawn battle, but in its results one of the most decisive naval contests in history. That battle, coupled with the battle of the day before, which showed that no unarmored could stand before an armored vessel, decided the construction of future navies.

Instantly workshops all over the world resounded with the work of building new navies with deflective armor, high power guns, improved projectiles and improved machinery. But when we trace effect to cause, it was not the battle between the Virginia and the Monitor that begat modern navies; that was but a link in the chain of causation; it was the Virginia that begat the Monitor.

The Navy Department at Washington only listened to and adopted the plans of Ericsson for the Monitor when repeated reports from Norfolk showed that the Virginia, with her deflective armor, was under way, and that in all probability nothing could meet her but another ship with deflective armor. One experiment begat another; one success was met with another. So it is, my countrymen, that in the genius of Confederate naval officers is found the germ of the naval armaments that now attract the wonder of the world.

The Virginia was not the only marvel wrought by Confederate constructors. There were the Louisiana, the Mississippi, the Arkansas, the Albemarle and others. The Albemarle was built in a cornfield in North Carolina, out of timber, some of which was standing when she was started, and of iron that was hunted up here, there and everywhere. The Albemarle went down the sound, encountered a fleet of six vessels off Plymouth, sank one of them, the Southfield, drove the others away and aided the Confederates on land to recapture Plymouth. At another time the Albemarle fought a drawn battle against nine gunboats of the enemy. Eventually it was her fate to be destroyed in the night time by the almost superhuman daring of Lieutenant Cushing of the United States Navy. The Arkansas, with all her guns ablaze at the same time, three on each side, two forward and two aft, perhaps the only vessel that ever made a successful fire in four directions at once, ran through the whole fleet of Farragut and Davis and reached Vicksburg in safety. The Tennessee was built on the banks of the Alabama river at Selma, and who is there that does not know of her brave fight against Farragut's whole fleet after it had passed the fortifications at the mouth of Mobile Bay? [218]

If it had been possible for courage and genius to win with the resources at command, the Confederates would have whipped the fight upon the water, but the task was superhuman. We were not fighting Spaniards then, but men of our own blood, the odds against us were too great.

In the United States Home Squadron and Potomac Flotilla, alone, there were ninety-nine ships. The Federal vessels in our western rivers were almost without number. The Confederate fighting ships, one after another, were destroyed, many of them as they were nearing completion. So successfully were we building ships at New Orleans that Admiral Porter in his naval history expresses the opinion that if Farragut had been three months later we should have driven the Federal fleets North, raised the blockade and secured from European governments recognition of the independence of the Confederacy.

In another branch of naval warfare the genius of Confederate naval officers was similarly conspicuous. They developed the use of the torpedo to an extent never before dreamed of More than forty United States vessels were badly injured or totally destroyed by this weapon. There is no better illustration of Confederate devotion and daring than the history of the ‘Fish,’ a little submarine torpedo boat, that was built at Mobile. There, in the first experiment, the little craft failed to rise and buried her crew of eight in the waters. The ‘Fish’ was raised and taken to Charleston. Another crew of nine went down with her and only one escaped. There were volunteers again, and the third crew went down, only three escaping. Still there were volunteers, a fourth time the little boat went down and failed to rise. Still another crew volunteered and all were drowned. Out of five crews of eight men each, all but four men had been lost, but the spirit of the Confederates was not yet daunted.

Lieutenant George E. Dixon, of the 21st Alabama Infantry, begged to be allowed to take out the ‘Fish’ to attack the iron-clad Housatonic that lay off Charleston harbor. Beauregard consented, but only on condition that the boat should not go under water. The conditions were accepted; the Housatonic was destroyed, but Dixon and all his brave crew went down to rise no more.

When wrecks in Charleston harbor were being destroyed, after the close of the civil war, near the Housatonic lay the ‘Fish.’ In it were the skeletons of Dixon and his six companions, every man at his post. [219]

In that other field of naval warfare the destruction of an enemy's commerce, Confederate genius was also resplendent. We had but few cruisers afloat, more than fifty vessels were searching for them, they had no port of refuge, their own ports were blockaded, and yet the Geneva Commission found that three of these cruisers had destroyed ships and cargoes of the value of $15,000,000. Maffitt in the Florida and Semmes in the Alabama won immortal fame, and the exploits of Waddell in the Shenandoah will ever be remembered with admiration.

When the flag of the new nation was furled forever upon land, the Shenandoah was far off in the Northern Pacific among American whalers, and the last gun for the Confederacy was fired from her deck June 22d, 1865. The Shenandoah found her way to a British port, and surrendered to a British Admiral, November 6th, 1865.

To sum up the history of the Confederate Navy it is an almost unbroken record of energy and devotion and genius making a brave struggle, and often almost on the point of succeeding against odds that were absolutely overwhelming.

We build monuments to heroes, prompted by the noblest impulses of the human heart, and that future generations may imitate their example. In performing our sacred duties to-day let Alabamians rejoice that, as Alabama in the civil war gave Dixon and Semmes and thousands of other brave men to the Confederacy, so now in our war with Spain she has given Richmond Pearson Hobson to the Navy and Joseph Wheeler to the Army of the United States.

At the conclusion of his speech Mr. Herbert escorted Miss Janie Watts to the sailor statue, which she gracefully unveiled while reciting the following anonymous lines which are inscribed on the pedestal:

The seaman of Confederate fame
Startled the wondering world,
For braver fight was never fought,
And fairer flag was never furled.

The band rendered ‘Southern Marsellaise’ and as the last notes of the martial air died away, the chairman introduced Major J. M. Falkner who had been selected to speak for the cavalryman's statue.

Major Falkner's words.

As a member of General Wheeler's corps, Major Falkner had [220] seen many things that formed material for an interesting recital yesterday. He said:

Ladies and Gentlemen.

It was an inspiration on the part of the good women of the Ladies' Memorial Association in selecting granite for the statues representing the different arms of the Confederate service, nothing else could so truly represent the courage, the firmness of purpose, the stability, and their determination to dare all things in defence of a cause which they believed to be just, and in behalf of which they risked all they had or hoped for in this life. While this granite shall last, the history of their unflinching courage will not die.

I can only speak of the men who came under my own observation, and of the things that I saw myself, and therefore, will have to content myself in what little I have to say, chiefly with a recital of the operations of Wheeler's Cavalry, having been with it from its organization until the end of the war.

It may be interesting to some of you to know that the very first cavalry attached to what was afterwards known as the Army of the Tennessee, were from Alabama. These consisted of two companies, one commanded by Captain Bowie, of Talladega, and one commanded by my father, then Captain Jefferson Falkner. These companies were really ordered out to be sent to Ben McCullough in Missouri, but at the request of General Polk the orders were countermanded by the War Department, and we were stopped in transit at Corinth, Miss., and a few days afterwards we went to Union City, Tenn., where we were soon joined by a cavalry company commanded by Captain Cole, of Louisiana. We remained at Union City, at which point several regiments of infantry and several batteries of artillery were camped until the Federal Government sent a gunboat as far South as Hickman, on the Mississippi river, thus disregarding the neutrality of Kentucky; we then moved to Columbus, Ky., the cavalry moving ahead of the trains, protecting bridges, etc. So far as I now remember, these three companies were the only cavalry I saw until about the time of the occupation of Columbus, Ky., at which point other companies and battalions were added from time to time.

Since the days of the Krag-Jorgensen rifle and the Mauser rifle, it has been said that the whole plan of fighting must be changed; that the distance between combatants must be greater than heretofore, [221] and that we would have battles taking place where the distance between contending forces is a thousand yards or more.

What would you think of a body of cavalry to-day, going out armed only with muzzle-loading shot guns and pistols and sabres, to contend against cavalry armed with Krag-Jorgensen or Mauser carbines? It must not be forgotten that in 1861 the Federal cavalry were armed with the Burnside carbine and Maynard carbine, and the Colt's repeating rifle, either of which was capable of killing a man more than a mile distant; and yet the majority of the Confederate cavalry, in the beginning, were armed only with muzzle-loading shot guns, only a very few of them having pistols and sabres in addition. Yet, with these crude weapons the Confederate cavalry did not hesitate to face the superbly equipped Federal cavalry. Knowing that they stood no chance whatever at long range they adopted at once the tactics of hurling themselves into the midst of the enemy and making the fight as sharp and swift as it was possible to do it. By this method of fighting we found that there were few weapons more effective at short range than a double barreled shot gun loaded with buckshot. It must not be forgotten that every Confederate cavalryman had to furnish his own horse, bridle and saddle, and keep himself mounted during the term of his service. The Confederate government furnished none of these things. When one of our horses was killed there was no market so inviting as the camp of the enemy, and there were few dark, rainy nights in which some Confederate trooper did not furnish himself a mount from the camp of the enemy. And I believe it can be said without successful contradiction that when the war closed in 1865, more than fifty per cent. of the arms, accoutrement and equipment generally of the Confederate cavalry, bore the imprint of the United States.

These men performed the severest duties. Exposed to all kinds of weather, always moving; without exaggeration, there was scarcely a pig path between the Tennessee and Mississippi rivers, from Cairo, Ill., to Corinth, Miss., that was not traversed by the small bands of cavalry then connected with the army, locating the enemy, ascertaining promptly every move that was made, and not a movement of our own army was made without the presence of this cavalry, always leading the advance, and covering the retreat of our army. They were in hundreds of engagements where men were killed, of which no mention is made in history, but in which engagements as heroic, deeds were performed as any of those ever chronicled in song or story. In the general engagements as a rule, the cavalry were upon [222] the flanks of our army, and on many occasions assaults were made with a view of turning our flanks, and the cavalry, both on foot and on horse, would contest with the enemy every inch of ground, and history fails to record an instance where the flank of our Army of the Tennessee were ever turned by reason of the cavalry giving away.

Do you recall the battle of New Hope Church? I had the honor on that occasion, to carry the news to our gallant Kelley, and to the immortal Pat Cleburne, that Hooker's corps was then in the woods, advancing on the line then held by Wheeler's cavalry dismounted, with no entrenchments and breastworks whatever. On that occasion the fight was made principally by Cleburne's Division and Wheeler's Cavalry, and Hooker's Corps was driven in confusion from the field, and in this battle more men were left dead upon the field than were killed during the entire war between Spain and the United States.

During the battle of Murfreesboro, Wheeler's cavalry more than once, made a complete circuit of Rosecrans' entire army, destroying practically every wagon and team that he had, making it absolutely impossible for Rosecrans to make an attempt to follow Bragg for more than twenty-four hours after Bragg had retreated. I was in the city of Murfreesboro, Tenn., myself, with a squad of cavalry the night after Bragg had retreated therefrom.

I can truthfully say to you from my own observation and experience, that Wheeler's cavalry fought every branch of the Federal army, including such armored vessels as they had upon the rivers and streams of the country in which this cavalry was located. For instance, only a short time after the battle of Murfreesooro, Colonel William B. Wade, that gallant and noble son of Mississippi, Colonel of the 8th Confederate cavalry, to which I was attached, contrary to orders, stole our little regiment away, together with two pieces of artillery from Wiggin's battery, while Wheeler was on a raid in the rear of Nashville, and stationed us upon the banks of the Cumberland, where the snow was not less than a foot deep. Very soon a transport came along, when only a few shots from the small arms were necessary to effect the capture of the vessel. In the course of half an hour another transport came which was captured in like manner. Then a third came, which, after an attempt to run by us, notwithstanding our fire, was also compelled to surrender. It is needless to say that after each boat was tied to the bank a visit was made by details specially made for that purpose to each one of the [223] boats, where an abundance of supplies, both solid and liquid, were obtained and enjoyed by the men. Finally a very suspicious smoke was seen up the river and a gunboat hove in sight, commanded by Lieutenant VanDorn, who at once took in the situation, increased his speed and prepared for action. But he had no sooner come within range of the small arms than volleys were fired into each and every port hole and at the pilot, until they were compelled to surrender, the artillery, at the direction of Colonel Wade, having ‘fired a salute.’ Three of these boats, including the gunboat, were burned, and all the prisoners taken from the several boats were placed upon the largest vessel and sent on their way rejoicing. A short time after this I read what purported to be an account of this action in a Southern paper, the headlines of which characterized Wheeler's Cavalry as ‘Wheeler's Horse Marines.’

As the war progressed, and as our men became accustomed to the ways and tactics of the enemy, who would often times charge upon our outposts immediately upon seeing the picket, with a view of capturing the grand guard or picket reserves, it became seldom that we would lose one of our men in that way. Although it was impossible to mount their horses and form themselves before the enemy would be upon them, each and every man would mount and fly in different directions, in a few moments rallying again at the proper place. As evidence that this was not the result of demoralization or cowardice, I will tell you of an incident in which one of our Alabama boys, not exceeding fourteen years of age, was the principal actor. In front of Luverne, between Murfreesboro and Nashville, a part of the 1st Alabama Cavalry, which was Clanton's old regiment, was on picket duty on the pike. A battalion of Federal cavalry under a gallant officer came up, and upon approaching our picket post he instructed his men that immediately upon the firing of our picket, for every man to rush in and capture his man, so that when the picket fired they all came with a yell and a dash. This little boy, with no arms but an old Austrian rifle, and riding a little gray pony, dashed down a lane leading due south, toward where my own command was on picket. The Federal officer, thinking he had a safe thing, selected the boy as his man, and pursued him down the lane for two or three hundred yards. Finally the little fellow leaped off his pony and over the fence. The Colonel dashed up and demanded his surrender, but the little fellow, with his old Austrian rifle resting on a rail and with his finger on the trigger said: ‘I guess I've got you! I guess I've got you!’ Whereupon he made the Colonel drop his pistol and [224] his sword and move off a few yards. He then pulled down the fence and crossed it, putting on the Colonel's sword and pistol, strapping his Austrian rifle on his back and proceeded to march his prisoner to headquarters.

Looking back through thirty-three years, in the light of all I have seen and read, I do not believe that any country in the world's history, before or since, has produced a braver or nobler set of men than those who constituted the Confederate cavalry. There is, first of all, our own glorious Wheeler, Bedford Forrest, J. E. B. Stuart, Hampton, our own gallant and chivalrous Kelley, our own W. W. Allen, Fitzhugh Lee, Martin, Humes, VanDorn, Robinson, Chalmers, Hagan, Adams, Armstrong, Ashby, Brewer, Williams, John H. Morgan, Basil Duke, Iverson, Brewer, Wade, Clanton, John T. Morgan, Roddy, Buford, Wailes, Prather, our own Tom Brown, Terry and Wharton, Charley Ball and a host of others, good and true men, of whose heroic deeds it would be pleasant to tell you, but time will not permit.

I did not mention the name of poor Clay King. He deserves a better fate. Let me tell you one instance showing the gallantry of of this man: At Booneville, Miss., while we were led by General Chalmers, with the 8th Confederate on the left, Clanton's 1st Alabama in the center and Wirt Adams on the right, we charged upon a force under General Sheridan at Booneville, Miss. Clay King's battalion was left to protect our rear. We had driven the Federal cavalry away while they were feeding their horses on wheat, and Clay King permitted his men to take the bits out of their horses' mouths and let them turn into the fence corners and feed, while the other forces were fighting in the front. While in this position a column of Federal cavalry charged them in the rear. King then caused his men to mount, without bits in their horses' mouths, and charged the enemy and drove them back.

Happy am I at the recollection of having been associated in those days with such men as the gallant McEldery, who fell, with many others, at Varnell Station, near Dalton, in as gallant a charge as was ever made in war. There was Knox Miller, Charley Pollard, Tim Jones, Tom Hannon, David T. Blakey, Warren Reese, Barron, Crommelin, Anderson, Chambliss, Moore, John Clisby, George Allen, Clay Reynolds, Powell, King, Bob Snodgrass, Ed. Ledyard, Pete Mastin, John Leigh, Jim Judkins, and hundreds of others whom I remember with pleasure who risked their lives on many bloody fields, and showed to the world what only a Confederate cavalryman [225] could do; and there are hundreds of our comrades whose life blood has made sacred the soil of the South by reason of their having sacrificed their lives in defence of the cause which they believed to be just.

Wheeler's Cavalry was the veritable eyes of the Army of the Tennessee. They were here, there, and everywhere; in the enemy's camps, counting their camp fires, their stacks of guns; being able to tell with almost absolute accuracy the number and character of the troops of the enemy and their location, burning wagon trains and destroying bridges, harrassing the enemy in their flanks and rear, and in every conceivable way; always on picket duty, and always between our main army and that of the enemy.

Only a few weeks ago I met a gallant officer, who is now in the Federal Army, who was from Georgia, and who told me that when he was a little boy he saw a charge made by one of Wheeler's cavalry regiments, and that he had never forgotten it. This was the charge made at Cassville, Ga., by the 8th Confederate Calvalry, in which they captured about 100 wagons, all loaded with army baggage, each having from four to six mules. These were brought safely out, and added very much to the equipment of our own army. In the Sequatchee Valley, according to the best estimate, we captured between 400 and 500 of the enemy's wagons, but which we were compelled to burn.

From time to time there has been much criticism of the cavalry. In some instances it was stated that a visit from them was as disastrous at a visit from the enemy. Doubtless in many instances this was true, for the simple reason that they had no means of subsistence, except upon the country through which they passed, and as they were always moving away from supply trains and the like, there was no other recourse, except to subsist upon the resources of the country in which they happened to be for the time being.

In these various movements of the cavalry away from our own lines, our men were often shot down and we were compelled to leave them upon the field, and they were never seen again. There is not a State through which this body passed that is not hallowed by the blood of our valiant comrades, and made sacred by the fact that their bones were bleached on, or lie buried in its soil. The cavalry participated in every important engagement of the Army of Tennessee, commencing with Shiloh, April 6th, 1862, and ending in North Carolina in 1865.

Well do I remember the teachings of the gallant and lamented [226] General Bowen, of Missouri. While we were at Camp Beauregard, some twenty-five miles east of Columbus, Ky., in the winter of 1861, when we were threatened with an attack by a very large force of Federals, these three companies that I first mentioned were addressed by this gallant officer. By order of General, Polk, we had been furnished with some old guns, known as ‘Hall's Carbines’; up to that time we had nothing but pistols and sabres. General Bowen told us that these carbines were worthless, that he had tried to get the order sending them to us countermanded, but he said, ‘We have a chance to get rid of them, and will do it to-morrow. I will only furnish you one round of ammunition to the man,’ said he, ‘and I wish you to fire that before you leave camp, and then throw your guns away. After that, depend upon your pistols and your sabres, and you will come out victorious.’ Acting on his suggestion, we threw the guns away, and from that time the companies composing the 8th Confederate Regiment were armed only with pistol and sabre, and in the light of our experience, I am sure our efficiency was in no way impaired by not being provided with guns.

When our army left Columbus, Ky., the cavalry was the last to leave that city; when we retreated from Corinth the cavaly was in the rear. As you doubtless remember, as a matter of history, we went as far South as Tupelo, and from there we were transferred to Chattanooga, Tenn. Thence we led the way for Bragg through Kentucky; we fought with him at Perryville; we fought over practically all the ground leading back through Cumberland Gap to Knoxville, and at many points, until we got to Murfreesboro. There we located at Stewart's Creek, and there is not a foot of land between Stewart's Creek and the outposts of the enemy around Nashville that was not traversed by this cavalry hundreds of times. When Rosecrans commenced his advance on Murfreesboro, as I now remember, it was six days we fought this army before it came in contact with our infantry. That night, at 12 o'clock, after our horses had been groomed and fed, we left for his rear, and we continued in his rear practically until after Bragg had retreated from Murfreesboro; in fact, Bragg had retreated, leaving only Cleburne's Division, with one or two batteries of artillery and a regiment of cavalry between Murfreesboro and the enemy, leaving Wheeler in the rear of Rosecrans.

Leading back from Murfreesboro to the Tennessee river, and in the direction of Chattanooga, and Decatur, Ala., every portion of the ground was traversed by Wheeler's Cavalry, and there are but few [227] places where fights did not occur. But why recount these details? From Chattanooga, leading towards Atlanta, Chickamauga, Missionary Ridge, step by step, town by town, in fact, there was not sufficient to make a respectable farm land between Chattanooga, Tenn., or, I might say, from Nashville, Tenn., to Savannah, Ga., where Wheeler's Cavalry did not have a fight of some kind. From then to the last days in North Carolina, it was day by day, and every day, losing a man here and yonder, but at the close there was no command that presented a more solid front, or stood more firmly together, boot to boot, than those gallant boys who followed the fortunes of Wheeler from beginning to end.

I believe that what I say of Wheeler's Cavalry is also true of Forrest, Hampton, Stuart, and all those other gallant leaders of the Lost Cause.

At Thompson's Station, in Tennessee, Wheeler's Cavalry had the honor of capturing one who is now one of the heroes of Santiago, our own distinguished General Shafter, and I believe he was promoted for gallantry on that occasion.

Only a short time before the end, the gallant Shannon, who commanded what was known as ‘Wheeler's Scouts,’ captured in one night about seventy-five men who were doing picket duty for General Kilpatrick, and in this way enabled Wheeler to surprise his camp the next morning.

Did you ever see a cavalry charge? Imagine a thousand imps of darkness! a thousand fiends incarnate! drawn up in battle array. In front of them is a line which must be broken. You hear the cannons roar! The bursting of shell! The crashing of the grape and canister! You see the men with sabre drawn, with eyes flashing fire; every horse with head erect and champing his bit, as though he, too, were conscious of what was about to take place. They start! the tramping of hoofs resembling the roll of distant thunder; first a trot, then gallop, then they charge with yells and loud huzzas, and, like maniacs, they rush upon the enemy. See the gaps in the lines as the grape and canister crashes through them; you see them close up, boot to boot. There is no halting, but with a determination to do or die they rush their steeds ahead; then you hear the roll of musketry, the rattling fire of pistols, the clank of sabres, the shrieks of the wounded, and the groans of the dying; in a moment the vanquished ran madly from the field, pursued by the victors, dealing death to their fleeing adversaries. These are the times that try men's souls, and call for heroic action. [228]

From Shiloh to the last days in North Carolina, such scenes as I have here depicted occurred on many occasions, but whether successful or not the boys who wore the gray honored it and never faltered, and when the end came there was no better organized command in the entire Confederate Army than Wheeler's Cavalry Corps.

Fellow soldiers, this monument is not complete. We soldiers should add to it a statue showing the most queenly woman of which the human mind can conceive, to represent the most queenly women the world ever saw. These, the grandest, greatest, purest, noblest and best of God's handiwork, who went about as ministering angels during that dark period and who never faltered in caring for our sick and wounded, and giving us courage in every way — to them we are indebted for this and every other monument which has been erected, and for much of the history that has been written. While our best men were slain in that struggle, we saved our jewels, consisting of our women and our children and our honor.

Major Falkner led the way to the cavalryman's statue for Miss Laura Elmore, who, revealing the sculptured form, repeated the inscription that is carved under it. The lines are from the pen of Francis O. Ticknor:

The knightliest of the knightly race,
Who, since the days of old,
Have kept the lamp of chivalry
Alight in hearts of gold.

Monument presented.

Miss Gorman sang ‘Bonnie Blue Flag’ to the accompaniment of the band, and then Colonel A. A. Wiley, representing Mayor J. H. Clisby, presented to Governor Johnston, in behalf of the Ladies' Memorial Association, the Confederate monument. Colonel Wiley spoke briefly and with characteristic eloquence.

Governor Johnston had delegated his private secretary, Chappell Cory, to respond. Mr. Cory said:

Mrs. Bibb and Ladies of the Memorial Association, Mr. Mayor, Ladies and Gentlemen.

Through your devoted labor and patriotism this memorial has been reared upon the grounds of the State, and with this last act of consecration your work is complete. It remains now for the State to accept it at your hands, and to guard the sacred trust through the [229] passing years, an inspiration and a blessing to the people in their generations as they come and go. Deputed by the Governor to perform this pleasing but solemn duty, and speaking in his stead, on behalf of the great people who make the State, I accept it for them as a shrine where their patriotism will never forget to pay its worship. Let us remember, according to the inscription on its base, this monument has been secured and consecrated by the women of Alabama a memorial to the heroism of all our soldiers and sailors, of those who are living as of those who are dead. That devotion to duty which marked the shining pathway of the Confederate soldiers and sailors, to their own undying fame, is not merely a glorious episode of the past, a thing for memory and for epitaphs, but in the persons of those who survive is still a living and a breathing claim on our gratitude and reverence. As the State and people shall honor them, so shall this pile of stone and bronze be not a tribute which we have gathered to feed our vanity and pride, but a blessed emblem and outward show of what is in our heart of hearts.

Impressive tableau.

The prettiest feature of the exercises was furnished by the tableau, which concluded Miss Sadie Robinson's recitation of ‘Furl That Banner.’ Miss Robinson was tastefully costumed in gray to represent ‘The Southern Confederacy.’ She illustrated her recitation with the torn and tattered battle-flag of the 60th Alabama.

The thirteen pretty sponsors who represented the various States, clustered around Miss Robinson, their fair hands resting on the battered flagstaff.

Attired in gowns of immaculate white, with grey uniform caps and bright, crimson sashes, the bevy of pretty girls presented an unusually attractive spectacle. The sponsors, all Montgomery young women, were:

South Carolina—Miss Jean Craik.

Mississippi—Miss Maggie Crommelin.

Florida—Miss Joscelyn Fisher Ockenden.

Alabama—Miss Rebecca Pollard.

Georgia—Miss Katie Burch.

Louisiana—Miss Sarah H. Jones.

Texas—Miss Mattie Thorington.

Virginia—Miss Caroline Hannon.

Arkansas—Miss Mamie Holt. [230]

North Carolina—Miss Eliza Arrington.

Tennessee—Miss Mattie Gilmer Bibb.

Missouri—Miss Alabama Brown.

Kentucky—Miss Martha E. Bibb.

Rev. Dr. Eager invoked Divine blessings for the concourse, “taps” were blown on a clarionet and the gathering dispersed.

Richmond, VA. 1898.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.

An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.

Greek Display:
Arabic Display:
View by Default:
Browse Bar:

Southern Historical Society Papers, Volume 26.
Reverend J. William Jones, Ed.

This text is part of:

View text chunked by:

Table of Contents:

To the Confederacy's soldiers and sailors. Monument Unveiled on Capitol Hill, Montgomery, Alabama, with impressive ceremony, December 7, 1898.

Historic tribute of Alabama women.

The parade.

Ex-Governor Jones's Address.

The South did not rebel.

War not fought over the justice or morality of slavery.

How the Southerner viewed slavery.

The odds.

The Confederate soldier in Battle.

The return home.

Picture of this soldier.

His antagonist.

We are content in the home of our fathers.

Alabama should write history.

The passing of the Confederacy.

Colonel Sanford's oration.

Captain Screw's eloquence.

Hon. H. A. Herbert's speech.

Major Falkner's words.

Monument presented.

Impressive tableau.

Southern Historical Society Papers, Volume 26. Reverend J. William Jones, Ed.

This text is part of:

View text chunked by:

Table of Contents:

To the Confederacy's soldiers and sailors. Monument Unveiled on Capitol Hill, Montgomery, Alabama, with impressive ceremony, December 7, 1898.

Historic tribute of Alabama women.

The parade.

Ex-Governor Jones's Address.

The South did not rebel.

War not fought over the justice or morality of slavery.

How the Southerner viewed slavery.

The odds.

The Confederate soldier in Battle.

The return home.

Picture of this soldier.

His antagonist.

We are content in the home of our fathers.

Alabama should write history.

The passing of the Confederacy.

Colonel Sanford's oration.

Captain Screw's eloquence.

Hon. H. A. Herbert's speech.

Major Falkner's words.

Monument presented.

Impressive tableau.

Southern Historical Society Papers, Volume 26.
Reverend J. William Jones, Ed.