Confederate dead of Florida.
The ceremonies attending unveiling of the monument to, at Jacksonville, Florida, June 16, 1898. [extract from account of unveiling by Florida Times Union and Citizen.]
Presented by Charles C. Hemming, of Gainesville, Texas, formerly of Jacksonville, Florida, and member of 3d Florida infantry, C. S. A.Should the captious critics of American institutions or the observer of Republican principles require evidence of their stability, more than the story that one hundred and twenty years have given, they would have found convincing proof in the scene which Jacksonville witnessed yesterday. A thousand young men, the flower of the Seventh corps of the United States Army, escorted Confederate Veterans of thirty-five years ago through the streets of the city to the dedication of a monument erected by the generosity of one of Florida's sons, to the memory of Florida heroes who fell in the war which estranged for four years those who had been before and have since then been brothers. Greater contrasts in the whirl of time have rarely, if ever, been seen in any land, and such as that would hardly be deemed possible in any but America. To the sounds of martial strains they marched, the blue uniform of a reunited nation leading its grizzled veterans of the gray of former years. The Starry Cross and the Star Spangled Banner mingled in the same procession, and no one murmured. Splendid tributes of praise to Confederate heroes fell from eloquent lips to shouts welcomed by approval, which rose from the throats of the North and the South alike. Illinois and Virginia, Iowa and North Carolina, Wisconsin and New Jersey, through their soldiers, joined with Florida in honor to those who fought and bled and died for the Lost Cause, the cause which in the words of one speaker, “went down in defeat, but not in dishonor.”
