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in the Bloody Angle, our heroic chief, grasping a captured cannon to turn it on the foe, fell amongst his devoted men, pierced with mortal wounds, and sealing with his heart's blood the high-water mark of the Confederate cause.
As they bore him to the rear they met the gallant Hancock hurrying to the front.1 Each recognized the other.
They had been comrades in the old army.
And learning who he was, Hancock dismounted, and grasping Armistead's hand, told him with a soldier's sympathy, how sorry he was to see him wounded, and promised to send mementoes and messages to his loved ones in Virginia, and tried to cheer him with the hope that his wounds would not be mortal, as our hero said.
But Armistead was right.
He knew that death was near at hand.
Carried from the field a prisoner, he lingered through the 4th of July and died on the 5th, ‘leaving,’ says Martin, ‘an example of patriotic ardor, of heroism and devotion to duty which ought to be handed down through the ages.’
When his kinsmen heard of his glorious death they came and took his body, took all that was mortal of him, down to Baltimore, and with reverent hands laid him to rest amongst his own people, in the church-yard of old St. Paul's, the hero of Gettysburg besides the hero of Fort McHenry.
A granite obelisk marks the spot where he fell on Cemetery Ridge.
The sword which dropped from his dying grasp you may see it now in the Confederate Museum.
Such, comrades, was the soldier whose portrait we unveil tonight.
As I stand before you my thinghts leap back over the forty-five years that lie between, back to the day when I saw him leading his brigade through the storm of shot and shell on the field of Gettysburg.
“None died on that field with greater glory than he, though many died, and there was much glory.”
Yes, comrades, we know how many died whose names we hold in deathless honor-Edmonds and Owens, and Patton, and Williams, and Allen, and Stewart, and Hodges, and Magruder, and the knightly Garnett.
The heart of Virginia was wrung with anguish.
Her stately
1 A different account of this is given in Junkin's ‘Life of Hancock,’ page 117. I followed Colonel Martin.
Richmond, VA. 1909.
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