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5 



D. of D. 
OCT 31 1917 



THE COLONIAL PRB8B 
MCHMOND, VIBGINIA 
EVERETT WADDBT CO. 






l^irsinia'jf JHemorial to fter ^ong 
at #ettps!l)urg 

IN the early days of the present century, the feeling fre- 
quently found expression in camps of Confederate veter- 
ans, in chapters of Daughters of the Confederacy, and in 
meetings of other patriotic organizations, as well as iu the 
public press, that an appropriate memorial should be erected 
on the battlefield of Gettysburg, in Pennsylvania, in honor of 
the soldiers of Virginia who fought there in July, 1863. 

This feeling found concrete expression in the biennial 
message of the Governor to the General Assembly on January 
8, 1908, in which Governor Swanson said : 

"A more glorious exhibition of disciplined valor has 
never been witnessed than that shown by the Virginia 
troops at the battle of Gettysburg. The heroic achieve- 
ments of our troops in that fierce battle have given to this 
Commonwealth a fame that is immortal, a lustre that is 
imperishable. 

"I recommend that an appropriation be made to erect 
on this battlefield a suitable monument to commemorate 
the glory and heroism of the Virginia troops." 

One week later companion bills were introduced in the two 
Houses of the General Assembly — in the Senate by Hon. Don 
P. Halsey, of LjTichburg, and in the House of Delegates by 
Hon. Moses M. Green, of Fauquier — providing for the first 
steps inthe erection of such a monument. The House bill was 
passed in both bodies by unanimous vote, and was approved 
by the Governor on March 9, 1908. It read as follows : 

1. Be it enacted by the General Assembly of Virginia, That the 
sum of ten thousand dollars be, and is hereby, appropriated out of any 
funds in the treasury not otherwise appropriated, to be applied towards 
the erection of a suitable monument in the National Military Park at 
Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, to commemorate the deeds of Virginia sol- 
diers on that field. 

8. That the Governor of Virginia, and four others to be appointed 
by himself, shall constitute a committee of five to select a location, design 
and inscriptions for the said monument, subject to the approval of the 
Secretary of War and the Governor of the State of Virginia. 



3. The said committee are hereby authorized to use the whole or 
any part of said ten thousand dollars in securing the design and prepar- 
ing the location and foundation for said monument, but shall make no 
contract for any purpose involving any expense in excess of said ten 
thousand dollars. 

4. The said committee shall report to the next General Assembly 
their action under this act, and shall present a design for said monument 
which, with the money hereby appropriated, shall not in the aggregate 
cost over fifty thousand dollars. 

5. The said committee may be joined by any committee of citizens, 
camps or other organizations, in supplementing the amount of money 
appropriated for the purpose aforesaid. 

6. The said committee shall receive no compensation for their 
services, but shall be allowed and paid the actual and necessary expenses 
incurred by them in the performance of their duties, to be audited by the 
Auditor of Virginia, and paid out of any money not otherwise appro- 
priated. 

Pursuant to the provisions of this measure, Governor 
Swanson appointed the following Confederate veterans as 
members of the committee : Colonel Thomas Smith, of Fau- 
quier; Major John Warwick Daniel, of Lynchburg, a United 
States Senator from Virginia ; Major Henry Archer Edmond- 
son, of Halifax, and Captain Stephen Pahner Eead, of Meck- 
lenburg. Governors Claude Augustus Swanson, William 
Hodges Mann and Henry Carter Stuart were successively 
members and chairmen ex-officio of the body having the erec- 
tion and dedication of the memorial in charge. Senator 
Daniel, who took a deep interest in the proposition, rendered 
faithful and efficient service until his death in 1910, when he 
was succeeded by Colonel William Gordon McCabe, of Rich- 
mond. Otherwise the members as named above served 
throughout the entire life of the commission. Captain Read 
died at the very hour the monument was being unveiled. 

Following preliminary discussions, the commission in 1909 
visited the National Military Park at Gettysburg with a repre- 
sentative of the War Department, and selected a spot just 
off Confederate Avenue, at the point where General Lee 
viewed the second day's battle, as the site for the memorial. 
The commission thereupon invited proposals from sculptors, 
and, after examination of the various designs offered, deter- 
mined to accept that of Mr. F. William Sievers, at a price of 
forty-eight thousand dollars, conditioned upon the General 
Assembly carrying the project through. 

That body was much pleased with the report made by the 
commission, and with the design, and by an act approved by 
Governor Mann on March 9, 1910, continued the unexpended 
balance of the appropriation of $10,000 in force, and appro- 
priated $40,000 in addition, to cover the entire estimate of 
$50,000, allowing $2,000 for the expenses of the commission. 
Thereafter the unexpended balance of the sum of $50,000 was 
reappropriated for the same purpose in 1912, 1914 and 1916. 




MAcJOR HENRY ARCHER EDMONDSON 

HOUSTON. VA. 



CAPTAIN STEPHEN PALMER READ 

PALMER SPRINGS. VA. 



The Virginia Gettysburg Monument Commission. 



In 1914 the General Assembly set aside $8,000 for the ex- 
penses of dedication, but, since this had not been used in 1916, 
it was then reappropriated. 

Acting under the approval of the Legislature, the Gettys- 
burg Monument Commission, on March 15, 1910, closed a 
contract with Mr. Sievers covering the entire cost of the 
memorial. The specifications provided that the total height 
should be forty-two feet; the total height of the equestrian 
statue from the bottom of the bronze plinth to the top of the 
rider's hat, fourteen feet; total height of pedestal, twenty- 
eight feet; total expanse of bottommost base, not less than 
twenty-eight by twenty-eight feet. It was further pro\-ided 
that the sculpture was to be of United States government 
standard bronze, the pedestal of Southern granite of the best 
quality, and the foundation of concrete of best material, with 
the inscriptions in polished raised letters. All this was faith- 
fully observed. 

Mr. Sievers discovered the difficulties of an artist as he 
proceeded in his work. With fuU realization of the meaning 
of the work in which he was engaged, intended to immortalize 
in bronze the valor of Virginia's soldiers, and to stand for- 
ever as visible evidence that the Old Dominion had not for- 
gotten to honor her heroes, he toiled day after day for six 
years, building up and tearing down. In 1914 the group of 
figures about the base was complete in plaster, put on public 
exhibition for a day, and sent to the foundry, whence the 
bronze cast was soon forthcoming and was placed in position 
on the base prepared to receive it. The equestrian statue of 
General Robert Edward Lee mounted on Traveler, which 
surmounts the memorial, was completed in the spring of 1916. 
Delays in transportation of the plaster east made its comple- 
tion so late in the year, that the commission deemed it best 
for the comfort and safety of the veterans in attendance to 
postpone the dedication until 1917, and on June 8th of that 
year the unveiling took place in the presence of a large audi- 
ence of veterans from Virginia and other States. 



HInbocatton 

By Rev. James Power Smith, D. D. 

(Captain and A. D. C, Staff of Gen. T. J. Jackson, Army of Northern Virginia.) 

ALMIGHTY and ever gracious God — our God and our 
Fathers' God — "Who doest Thy will in the armies of 
Heaven and among the inhabitants of earth," grant us 
Thy grace that in this hour of deep and far-reaching interest, 
all may be done acceptably to Thee, to the good of every sec- 
tion of our land and to the glory of Thy great name. 

We are assembled in a place of great historic event and of 
memories most sacred and tender ; and with uncovered heads 
in Thy holy presence we hallow these memories. We have 
here builded a monument to the memory of an army of patriot 
soldiers and their great Captain — who here fought a great 
battle — bravely, conscientiously, looking to God for help — 
and yet went back with banner furled, with brows clear and 
uplifted, believing that God was on the field. Many of us have 
come up from the far, broad fields of the South, and here we 
are met by a great company from every section of the land — 
and now we stand under one flag, united again, and filled with 
a like spirit of patriotic brotherhood. For this we thank Thee, 
O God of Peace and Giver of all our blessings! — surely, 
"Great and marvellous are Thy works. Lord God of Hosts, 
just and true are Thy ways. Thou King of the Ages." 

Once there was written across this field a great story of 
warlike power and skill, of unselfish devotion of life and every 
sacrifice to great ideals of rights and liberties — and these 
things — the history and the ideals, the rights and the liberties, 
will never perish from the earth. And now we come again 
with a loftier, sweeter lesson of "Peace on earth, and good 
will to men" — with a witness to the personal character and 
spirit of men that led and men that followed, men that fought 
and men that fell, loftier, more valuable and fruitful and 
more enduring. In years and ages to come, our sons and all 
"men of good will" will come from all sections and from all 
lands to remember them and their unblemished fame, and 
with one consent will do them honor ! 

For our country and all the States in this day of cloud and 
deep concern we implore Thy favor. Let Thy grace be upon 
the President of the United States, and all in council with 
him, with the vast responsibility now resting upon them, and 



upon the Governors of these great States, States so fair to see, 
so strong in their miity, so richly blessed with a great pros- 
perity; and upon the people of every section, that all may 
learn "to do justly, to love mercy and to walk humbly with 
their God!" 

Hasten the coming of peace to this troubled and suffering 
world, and the time promised when men shall learn war no 
more, and Thy kingdom of righteousness and love shall be 
established in every land. 

Almighty God, whose well beloved Son counted not His 
life dear unto Himself, that He might win our peace and our 
redemption, guard and preserve our sons now going out to 
serve in the army and navy of their country. Let their hearts 
be right before Thee, and their purposes unselfish, just and 
strong. Mercifully grant that by their valour and sacrifice, 
peace with righteousness and mercy may prevail in all lands, 
great and small. Bring back our loved ones in safety and in 
the better and heightened manhood, which springs from all 
unselfish patriotism, and whole-hearted service of our 
fellowmen. 

All of which we ask in the name of the great Captain of 
our salvation, our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen ! 




RIGHT REV. ROBERT A.GIBSON. D.D. 

BISHOP OF VIRSINIA. 



CAPTAIN THE REV. JAS. POWER SMITH, D.D. 

RICHMOND. VA. 



By His Excellency Henry Caktee Stuart, 
Governor of Virginia. 

FDR the third time the Blue and the Gray are assembled 
upon this field of fame; once as mortal foes, half a cen- 
tury later as friends, and now, while the war drum beats 
around the world, we gather here to dedicate a memorial to 
the constancy and valour of the brave Virginians who fought 
and died on this historic ground. 

Torn asunder by divergent views of the Constitution of 
the United States, fifty-six years ago this land was plunged 
into fratricidal strife. We are not here to consider the rea- 
sons for that conflict; they have been well defined in these 
words: "Whether in the United States the citizen owed alle- 
giance to the Federal Government as against his State Gov- 
ernment was a question upon which men had divided since the 
birth of the Republic. The men of the North responded to the 
call of the sovereign to whose allegiance they acknowledged 
fealty — the men of the South did the same. It was a battle 
between rival conceptions of sovereignty rather than one 
between a sovereign and its acknowledged citizens. ' ' 

The issues involved were submitted to the sword, and by 
this bloody arbitrament the questions at issue were forever 
settled. Destiny decreed that one unbroken republic under 
one flag should reach from Canada to the Rio Grande, and 
from the Atlantic to the Pacific. For many reasons we would 
not blot out of American history one page of the epic which 
recoimts the rise and fall of the Confederacy, for though dim 
with tears and tragic in its grief, it is none the less fruitful in 
its lessons. Out of the memories of this heroic struggle, out 
of the fiery ordeal which tested to the uttermost the mettle of 
the men North and South — aye, even out of the blood that was 
shed on this and many other fields, has come our life and 
strength as a nation; our unity in heart and purpose, our 
supreme devotion to the flag of a reunited country, which 
today floats above us. 

We treasure the valour which history records on both 
sides — the splendid magnanimity of Ulysses S. Grant, who, 
without objection, acceded to the honorable terms of surren- 
der at Appomattox, which provided that, "The officers are to 
retain their side arms, private horses and baggage," and 



"Each officer and man is to be allowed to return to his home" 
and "Not to be disturbed hj United States authority as long 
as they observe their parole and the laws in force where they 
reside. ' ' 

We treasure the words spoken here by Abraham Lincoln 
when the smoke yet lingered on the battle field — words of 
sublime eloquence, mingled with infinite kindliness, when he 
said: 

"We must not be enemies. Though passion may have 
strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The 
mystic chords of memory stretching from every battle 
field and patriot grave to every living heart and hearth- 
stone all over this broad land will yet swell the chorus of 
the union when again touched, as surely they will be, by 
the better angels of our nature. ' ' 

We treasure the heroic deeds and inspiring example of all 
the brave soldiers living and dead who gave to us and to the 
world a new standard of American manhood. 

Out of all this we have learned the double lesson of the 
generosity of a chivalrous foe in the hour of victory and the 
fulfillment of the noble utterance of our own great leader, 
that "Hiunan fortitude should be equal to himian adversity." 

With the fine perception and real genius of the true artist, 
the sculptor chosen by the Commonwealth to express visibly 
and permanently the thought of the people, has placed about 
the base of this memorial the express presentments of the 
tj^pe of men who followed Lee. Here we see represented all 
arms of the service, and all the differing classes essentially 
typical of Southern life and manhood whicli combined to make 
the ' ' Army of Northern Virginia ' ' for so long a time invinci- 
ble. The life, the ideals and the principles of these men as 
they stand cannot be exalted by himian tongue or human hand, 
and yet we surmount this noble group by the inspiring figure 
of the one man, who, by the majesty of his character, the per- 
fection of his manhood, and the glory of his genius, repre- 
sents and embodies all that Virginia and her sister Southern 
States can or need vouchsafe to the country and to the world 
as the supreme example of their convictions and principles. 
He was the scion paramount of a long line of soldiers and 
statesmen, the consimimate flower of a unique civilization 
which had gradually developed amid the stern experiences 
and vexed problems of a new land — the heir direct of the 
principles of English liberty consecrated by centuries of 
heroic struggle and ennobled by unswerving devotion to the 
lofty ideals that had their germ at RunnjTuede. 

The Commonwealth of Virginia gave Lee his birth, his 
training, and the traditions and impulses that controlled his 
course ; Lee gave to the Cormnonwealth and to the South his 
noble ambitions, his fortunes and all his strength ; the Com- 

10 



monwealth gave to humanity the noble story of a life lived to 
its ending on the very highest plane, and in the rarest and 
most exalted atmosphere of thought and motive to which 
humanity may attain. He marches across the distant and 
sombre scene panoplied in light, a soul serene in victory, 
sublime in defeat. In every relation of life his character is 
revealed in flawless beauty. The tongue of calumny is palsied 
in the futile effort to detract from his greatness or impugn his 
motives. Obedient to his conviction of the paramount right 
of his native State, he expressed that conviction in these noble 
words : 

"If the Union is dissolved, and the Government is dis- 
rupted, I shall return to my native State, and share the 
miseries of my people, and, save in defense, will draw my 
sword on none." 

It is fitting that we erect here this noble effigy of our great 
Captain surrounded by the memorials of men who fought and 
fell fifty-four years ago. The imperishable bronze shall out- 
live our own and other generations. We who stand here today 
shall pass into the beyond, leaving what legacies we may of 
duty done or ideals sustained; moon and stars shall shine 
upon this face of incomparable majesty ; the dawn shall gild 
it with the splendor of sunrise; the evening shadows shall 
enfold it in their gentle embrace ; and until the eternal morn- 
ing of the final re-union of quick and dead, the life of Eobert 
Edward Lee shall be a message to thrill and upUft the heart 
of all mankmd. May a double portion of his spirit rest upon 
and abide with the brave men who today are rallying to the 
defense of our liberty against the aggression of a foreign foe. 
Many of them doubtless go forth never to return; others 
shall gladden our eyes when we welcome them home from 
glorious victory, but all, whether "the unreturning brave" or 
the gallant legions baptized with fire may look to this martial 
figure, riding serene and fearless as of old, as the noblest and 
knightliest type of American manhood. 

And now, sir, as Chief Executive of the ancient Common- 
wealth of Virginia, the mother of Washington and Lee, I give 
into the keeping of the United States, of which you are the 
honored representative on this auspicious occasion, this noble 
monrmient, which shall stand not only as the undying expres- 
sion of the high ideals in which we of the South would this 
day sanctify our memories, but as a fresh and abiding inspira- 
tion to all men North and South who in this trying hour of 
our National existence would stand shoulder to shoulder in 
defense of our common country. 



11 



By Hon. William M. Ingkaham, Assistant Secretary of War. 

Your Excellency, Confederate Veterans, Ladies and 
Gentlemen: 

IT gives me great pleasure to be present on this occasion and 
to perform a most pleasant duty in behalf of the War De- 
partment. This beautiful memorial is placed on this his- 
toric ground by the State of Virginia in honor of those who 
sacrificed their lives in behalf of the ideals for which they 
fought. We gather around this impressive monument with a 
reverence due to an occasion of this kind in order that the 
memory of those who represented the State of Virginia in the 
greatest battle of the Civil War shall be kept green. We are 
not here to discuss the causes of the War or to comment on 
its results. We are here, however, to pay a loving tribute to 
those who fell for a cause which they believed was just and 
right. No one can deny their sincere belief and honest con- 
victions of the justice of their cause, and they died fighting as 
bravely as any men ever fought in battle. 

We are now meeting at a critical time in the history of our 
coimtry. War has once more come upon us, and all our man- 
hood, wealth, and energy must be summoned to support the 
Government and bring to a successful termination the great 
struggle in which we are now involved. The lessons that we 
gather from the battlefield on which we stand, the inspiration 
that this monument gives us, all go toward helping us solve 
the difficulties of the present hour. The Civil War up to the 
time of the outbreak of the present conflict was the greatest 
struggle the world had ever seen, but now it sinks into insig- 
nificance compared with the war going on in Europe. The 
battle of Gettysburg, the greatest of the Civil War, was a 
small one compared with the gigantic and terrific battles of 
the present war. But those who took part in the Civil War 
and especially in the battle of Gettysburg realize what war 
means and can best interpret the full significance of the pres- 
ent struggle. 

As we look over this beautiful field with its monuments, 
markers and cannon, a peaceful atmosphere pervades the 
scene. The mountains in the distance seem to embody the 
very idea of strength and manhood, and under those heights 
this peaceful field, once the scene of carnage, is now a beauti- 

13 



ful park, a reservation set aside and preserved by the United 
States as a meeting place for those who once bitterly fought 
on its soil. It is a field that is famous all over the world, and 
it is most fitting that those who once contested every inch of 
its surface should come here to honor those who fell. It is a 
delightful thought that those who actually took part in the 
Civil War and those who know it only as history can come 
here as brothers and all stand for a reunited country and a 
common cause. 

This statue means much not only to Virginia, but to the 
United States as well. The State that this monument repre- 
sents is one of our oldest, being one of the thirteen original 
States of the Union. She has given to this country the great- 
est names in our history. Washington, "the Father of his 
Country;" Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence, and John Marshall, the greatest expounder of the 
law. It is truly wonderful to read the list of Presidents and 
other distinguished men that Virginia has produced. And 
today she is doing her full part in sharing the great burdens 
that this country is called upon to shoulder. No wonder, then, 
that I take a special pride in coming here as the representa- 
tive of the War Department to accept in its behalf this mag- 
nificent work of art placed here by the great State of Virginia, 
exemplifying the love of her people for those who fought and 
died in lier behalf. This monument will always stand here 
and it will tell future generations of valorous deeds and devo- 
tion to ideals and principles that the passage of time cannot 
erase. 

This battlefield is consecrated with the blood of both the 
North and the South. We stand around this monument to 
write in large letters the story of the heroism of the sons of 
the Old Dominion who took part in the battle of Gettysburg. 
Different States, regiments and associations have erected 
here monuments to their heroes, that the part they took in 
this great battle may not be forgotten. Although the armies 
of the North and South vied with each other for supremacy, 
and it was here that the greatest carnage occurred, yet the 
memory of this great battle awakens no feelings of anger 
within the heart of any one. This field was contested inch by 
inch, stand after stand was made first by one side and then 
by the other, shot and shell poured forth from the mouths of 
hundreds of cannon, and yet it is today in this reunited nation 
a field on which both sides meet as one great family. Nowhere 
in the civilized world can you find a similar case. It is truly 
characteristic of the American people, a people who can 
adjust themselves to new conditions, a people who can forget 
past differences and stand as one before the world. This 
battlefield represents the true spirit of the people of our great 
country, for here we can all assemble and share in each other's 
joys and sorrows and in each other's victories and defeats. 

U 



Virginia knows how to honor those she loved and who fought 
and died for her ideals. It is only natural and proper for 
those who survive to honor those who fell. It matters not 
whether they be the victors or the vanquished as long as their 
part was honorable and they fought like men. 

This monument, then, has been erected in honor of the 
memory of all of the sons of Virginia who took part in the 
battle of Gettysburg. The General Assembly of that State 
made a generous appropriation that a fitting memorial should 
stand on the very ground on which they fought. I desire to 
compliment all those who have labored to produce this memo- 
rial. The commission having this matter in charge has cer- 
tainly been faithful to its trust. The sculptor who has 
wrought the figures representing the different arms of the 
Confederate service and who has produced this beautiful 
equestrian statue of that great and gallant soldier, General 
Robert E. Lee, should be specially commended on the excel- 
lence of his work. Indeed, Virginia should be pleased and 
has occasion to feel justly proud of this memorial. 

In behalf of the War Department, I extend its congratula- 
tions to the Commonwealth of Virginia in placing here such a 
beautiful statue to her sons. It is right and proper that Vir- 
ginia should be thus represented on this field. It goes without 
saying that the War Department is glad to add this beautiful 
statue to the niunber already under its care, and as long as 
granite and bronze endure, it shall stand as a great and loving 
tribute to those brave men who fought and died for their 
State and for a cause that they sincerely believed was just 
and right. 



1.5 




Major John Waewick Daniel 

United States Senator from Virginia, who was a member of the Commission 
until his death in 1910. 



By Leigh Robinson. 

Tu ne cede malis, sed contra audentior ito. 

Governor Stuart, Secretary In graham, and Fellow Soldiers: 

AT the centennial commemoration of the birth of Robert E. 
Lee, held in the city of Washington, in January, 1907, 
among the speakers was Mr. Justice Brewer, of the 
United States Supreme Court, who, in opening, said: "I 
vividly recall the pang I felt when there was brought to my 
house the body of an idolized brother, slain in battle with the 
army of Northern Virginia. At that moment I would have 
executed sentence of death with my own hand on General Lee. 
And yet," the distinguished Justice added, "I am here to- 
night, and willingly here, to add my leaf to the immortal 
wreath which time is fashioning for the brow of Lee." 

The tribute is a forceful one to the still invincibility of 
truth. Time, the Edax rerum of the Roman bard, whose beak 
devours all to which flesh is heir, in effacing what obscures, 
releases what is imperishable ; the spirit which triumphs over 
time. In time is fashioned the immortal wreath, yet not by 
time servers, not by the policies of potentates, not by the 
genius of servilities; but by a spirit of power transcending 
man's, which man is powerless to resist, year by year, takes 
shape more clearly the invincible impress. 

It is my cherished faith that what is true of Lee is true of 
the cause we served, which pierced with wounds for us is 
sacred ; and crowned with thorns for us is holy. The glowing 
pieties which laid down lives, laid down fortunes, laid down 
all save sacred honor, will grow as time grows. The story of 
our arms is safe. Military schools abroad impart to their 
pupils for their guidance the valiant passions of our com- 
rades and their captains. Our adversaries are willing to 
concede the prowess which gives point to their own. There 
is no need to defend the unassailed — still less the unassailable. 

There is a voice which says : All this heroism was "ghastly 
error;" heroism for a cause which was intrinsically false — 
false to the rights of man. They who so speak think all too 
lightly of a cause hallowed by such sacrifice. In memorials, 
like the present, is felt the refutation of the charge. There 
are things too high, too deep, too appealing to the genuine 
grace of sympathy, for memory to be other than a shrine. 

17 



Better proof could not be offered of the truth of a cause, than 
the truth to it before our eyes today. There is in constancy 
to conviction a dignity it is instinctive to respect. Heroic 
fight for this is grandeur. That goes straight to the heart 
which springs profoundly from it. 

To mingle with triumphal marches for shares in the 
triumph ; to shout hosannas to success, and bow down to the 
idols it sets up, is no novelty on earth. Evil does not cease to 
be evil, because we follow a multitude to do it. Prostration 
before power is familiar; it is ancient, it is oriental. It is 
prostration before the material. But when we assemble to 
commemorate catastrophe; to honor a valor only rewarded 
by its woimds, a sacrifice whose only witness is its cross, a 
phenomenon is witnessed, not to be explained by pride, vain- 
glory or hypocrisy. This is homage to the Spirit. What, 
then, was that to which the South gave her unfeigned heart? 
What was and is the truth to which that heart indomitably 
clings? What the meaning of this constancy? 

We lose sight of the deeper import of the War between 
the States, when we shut our eyes to the fact that it was a 
strife between ideals facing in opposite directions : ' ' They 
chose new gods," shoiated Deborah, "then was there war in 
the gates." The attitude of the South, in this divergence, 
may be stated in the terms of one who in his day was popu- 
lar idol of the North. In his book, "Twenty Years in Con- 
gress," James U. Blaine wrote these words: 

"The Southern leaders occupied a commanding posi- 
tion. Those leaders constituted a remarkable body of 
men. Having before them the example of Jefferson, of 
Madison and of George Mason in Virginia; of Nathaniel 
Macon in North Carolina, they gave deep study to the 
science of government. They were admirably trained 
as debaters, and they became highly skilled in the man- 
agement of parliamentary bodies. As a rule, they were 
highly educated; some of them graduates of Northern 
colleges; a still larger number taking their degrees at 
Transylvania in Kentucky, at Chapel Hill in North Caro- 
lina, and at Mr. Jefferson's peculiar, but admirable, 
institution in Virginia. Their secluded modes of life on 
the plantation gave them leisure for reading and reflec- 
tion. They took pride in their libraries, pursued the law 
so far as it increased their equipment for a public career, 
and devoted themselves to political affairs with an ab- 
sorbing ambition. Their domestic relations imparted 
manners that were haughty and sometimes offensive; 
they were quick to take affront, and they not infrequently 
brought personal disputation into the discussion of public 
questions ; but they were almost without exception men 
of high integrity, and they were especially and jealously 

18 



careful of the public money. Too often ruinously lavish 
in their personal expenditures, they believed in an eco- 
nomical government, and throughout the long period of 
their domination, they guarded the Treasury with rigid 
and unceasing vigilance against every attempt at extrav- 
agance, and against every form of corruption." 

Civil liberty is the fruit of moral victory over selfish appe- 
tite. The antithesis of liigh and low is between them who 
sacrifice themselves for others, and those who sacrifice others 
for themselves. When the spirit of unselfish duty and sacri- 
fice therefor speaks with authority from the summit of the 
State, exists the Commonwealth. The prolonged "domina- 
tion ' ' unfolded by this citation is that of prolonged fidelity to 
trust in the main at a pecuniary sacrifice. There is unfolded 
a glimpse of leaders who aimed to be sponsors of principles 
which would deserve, and by deserving win, sympathy and 
conviction ; who aimed to prevail by persuasion not by force ; 
least of all by the force we name corruption. Not a few of 
these leaders might have said with Caius Gracchus: "We 
went into office with full hands, and returned with empty 
ones." Their poverty was noble, for it was the poverty of 
principle. Self-dedication to common weal — the divine 
economy of noblesse oblige — is that which at the inmost core 
holds a human world together. Throughout a long "domina- 
tion," Blaine being judge, the trumpet gave no imcertain 
sound. Trust had not been violated. The great government 
is that which in the true sense of a fine word is a trust. Out 
of the struggle to establish justice; to thwart the innate 
selfishness, at cross-purposes therewith, is achieved freedom. 
The domination described by Blaine is one of which it were 
safer for commimities to have too much rather than too little. 
The strength of mutual service is the triumph of free gov- 
ernment. 

Blaine does not stand alone. On May 5, 1868, Hon. James 
G. Garfield said in the House: "In April, 1861, there began 
in this country an industrial revolution not yet completed. 
The year 1860 was one of remarkable prosperity in all 
branches. For seventy years no federal tax gatherer had 
been among the laboring population of the United States. 
Our merchant marine, engaged in foreign trade, promised 
soon to rival the immense carrying trade of England." In 
November, 1877, the same member said: "I suppose it will 
be admitted on all hands that 1860 was a year of unusual busi- 
ness prosperity. It was a time when the bounties of Provi- 
dence were scattered with a liberal hand on the face of our 
republic. It was a time when all classes of our community 
were well and profitably employed." Again, on March 6, 
1878: "The fact is, Mr. Chairman, the decade from 1850 to 
1860 was one of peace and general prosperity." 

19 



The word of nature is cooperation. As the royal Stoic 
affirmed: "We are made for cooperation." The matter for 
world decision is : shall it be cooperation in name merely, or 
in truth; honest or dishonest! Wealth of every kind, growth 
of every kind, is child of cooperation. Honest, noble coopera- 
tion creates the power that knows how to give stability to 
weakness ; how to give itself for others, and by this glorious 
gift to build up and to bless; in this is root and essence of 
that we rightfully name greatness. Such cooperation reveals 
the supremacy of man's higher nature. In such noble pres- 
ence of man's spirit, man's government puts on a likeness of 
the diviue. Then, not without fitness, may be said: "The 
gods have come down to us in the likeness of men." Unsel- 
fish force is freedom, is truth and the truth of freedom. 
Slavery to self is that which denies the truth of freedom and 
all other truth. 

It is because this moral domination over selfish aggres- 
sion is the vital air of freedom, that freedom is so rare, so 
difficult, so transitory; the ever disappointed dream; the 
Paradise Lost as often as Regained ; reared out of ruin to be 
reared and ruined anew. Satan has been called the hero of 
the Miltonic Paradise Lost. Of each subsequent Lost Para- 
dise, this brilliant angel has been popular hero. From the 
beginning the Snake of Self has been the garden Snake. The 
conflict of liberty may be spoken of as that between the false 
gods and the true; or between the divine dignity of justice 
and the self-will of self-love. The upward road is not the 
easy road. 

The strength of corrupt empire confides in the directness 
of the appeal to the corrupt affections ; yet this empire again 
and again has had cause to be abashed by reiterated proof 
that the worship of material things ends in being the slave 
of lusts from which success has torn the bridle; Finally, as 
hi the sty of Circe, has followed reversion unto brute, fulfill- 
ing the sentence on the successful snake : ' ' On thy belly thou 
shalt go. ' ' This is the pathos and parable of Babel ; bound 
up with faith in the show of things, with material satisfac- 
tions, with selfish pride, with faith in power to climb to heaven 
on the top of brick and mortar — faith in a radiance cold as 
that of the icicle, and which like the icicle melts in the ray 
which causes it to glitter. The confusions of self confounded 
the vainglory. 

The force to countervail inherent animal selfishness is 
that hatred of injustice, which also is inherent, when the 
injustice is not our own. The instinct of justice, thus so often 
at variance with what seems expedient, faith interprets to be 
one with it; a heaven-taught expedience derived from the 
pang of heaven-sent experience. The fight of life is to be 
safeguarded from the selfishness of others, and our own — the 
latter the more deadly of the two. The fatal idolatry, as it 
ever was, is still — the deification of self. 

80 



If, theu, it be said: The ideal republic would seem to 
exact an ideal citizenship for admiuistration ; aud this is not 
by statutes, nor by constitutions, to be created ; yet the book 
which closed in 1861 was open long enough to illustrate, at 
the parting of the ways, a decent approximation to the excel- 
lence of high aims. Our citations give to us the glimpse of a 
power of justice which was barrier to the injustices of power ; 
a love of liberty without dissimulation ; a dignity which had 
been sought and found in governing greatly a great people, 
and not in plundering greatly a plundered people. The com- 
pact of union had been interpreted in terms of upright force 
at war with selfish force. The tradition of public justice had 
been translated into public life. This moral vigor, this clean 
administration, this face of flint against corruption, this mar- 
riage of right and duty, is that on which free government 
depends. We are given the picture of Paladins, who fought, 
as imder a spiritual banner, for the faith to which their fed- 
eral vows were plighted, and against what was inimical to 
this, as against disloyalty, infidelity, essential treason. Until 
material force tore the ensigns of power from them, the 
sophistries to entice from honest government had not pre- 
vailed; moral force withstood selfish force. It is a solecism 
to speak of that community as free which can be correctly 
described as "corrupt and contented." The true "irrepressi- 
ble conflict" is between the servants and the spoilers of the 
State; between government as a trust, and government as a 
spoil. In union there is strength — strength to exalt by un- 
selfish; strength to degrade by selfish union. 

A "domination" which upheld the banner of honor in 
public life might file strong claims to honor. A leadership 
and following attested and authenticated by such admissions 
might be thought to have deserved Roman triumph, rather 
than Roman crucifixion. If the leaders and followers de- 
scribed by Blaine were devoid of "moral ideas," devoid of 
"higher law," at least they governed the country with a high 
honor, which their successors have not been impetuous to ex- 
cel. The burden should rest on them, whose prowess it has 
been to lay low in the dust this "domination," to show, as 
proceeding from their own, something higher to replace it, 
some truer liberty, some finer justice, some nobler honesty. 
The "protection" demanded by these leaders and their fol- 
lowers was protection against maladministration." In a 
measure had been bound the Old Serpent of Self. If leader- 
ship fell from them, it was not because they fattened classes 
by spoliation of masses. They who bend their energies to 
repel corruption invite animosity from them who profit by it. 

The illustrious Hellenist, Dr. Basil Gildersleeve, is re- 
ported to have said to his students* that the War between the 
States was fought over a question of grammar to settle, 

*The Saturday Ei-ening Post, May 17, 191.3. 
21 



whether ' ' the United States is " or " the United States are. * ' 
He is reported to have given the correct grammar to be " the 
United States are." Our revered scholar is in this, as might 
be expected of him in any matter of scholarship, correct.** 

' ' No man can serve two masters. " " We, ' ' said the South, 
will cleave to the States, the original creative power." "We," 
said the North, "will cleave to the Union, the derivative 
power." Which is ultimate — creature or creator? 

A French epigram, with a dash of cjTiicism, imparts the 
admonition : ' ' Truth does not so much good in the world as 
its appearances do evil."* To every height to which man 
climbs, ascends from the abyss a whisper — so often the allur- 
ing whisper, "Cast thyself downward." The lure to betray 
the real for the apparent; the lasting for the transient, is 
subtler than all the beasts of the field. It is Satan 's sophism. 
The arch enemy is never so dangerous as when transformed 
by his own rhetoric into an angel of light. This is the arraign- 
ment of them who lost ! A recreancy to the rights of man. 

The right of man, whatever be intended by the phrase, 
did not, like the breadfruit tree of the tropics, spring 
into spontaneous activity. The one inalienable right of man 
is the right to justice. The duty of justice is correlative. It 
is justice, Plutarch assures us, "which makes the life of such 
as practice it the life of a god, as opposed to that injustice 
which turns it to that of beast. ' ' Right in ourselves without 
duty from ourselves is the sham sceptre. The price of man's 
right for himself is the discharge of man's duty to others. 
Our duties to others, our duties to ourselves, named our self 
respect, it is not ours to relinquish. Rights without duties 
reign by the sword. The duties of the social organism are 
debts of obligation. We must discharge them, or be default- 
ers. This debt of life is a debt of nature. The right does not 
exist to escape duty, trial, responsibility. The right to shirk 
is not one of the rights of man. As is the duty we have done, 
so is our strength, so is our day. It is duty which immortal- 
izes itself. A few words, then, seem called for as to alleged 
apostasy to the rights of man by the Commonwealth, for 
which it is my honor to speak today. 



*La verite ne fait autant debien dans le monde que ses appearances y font 
de mal. 

**Section 3d of the Third Article of the Constitution provides: "Treason 
against the United States shall consist only in levying war against them or in 
adhering to their enemies." 

On December 1, 1789, a letter of Washington to the Emperor of Morocco 
begins : 

"Great and Magnanimous Friend: Since the date of the last letter, 

which the late Congress, by their President, addressed to your Imperial 

Majesty, the United States of America luive thought proper to change their 

government." 

More lately, Mr. Olney, in a proclamation of neutrality, referred to Spain 
as a power "with which the United States are, and desire to remain, on terras of 
peace and amity." "The founder of our federate republic" is the title bestowed 
on Washington by Light Horse Harry in the funeral oration he was appointed 
by the two Houses of Congress to deliver. 

22 



Few tilings could be more sardonic than the crucifixion 
of Virginia by New England, with the approbation of Old 
England, for the sin of slavery. 

Prior to the Revolution, some twenty-three ordinances, in 
the form of statutes, for the prohibition of the slave trade, 
were passed by the House of Burgesses of Virginia ; each in 
turn negatived by Britain's monarch. On October 5, 1778, 
Virginia, in the exercise of her independent sovereignty, 
passed an act prohibiting the importation of any slave into 
the Commonwealth ; Virginia was the one sovereignty which 
in the eighteenth century enacted opposition to the slave 
trade. Twenty-nine years before England, twenty-nine years 
before the United States prohibited the slave trade, Virginia 
placed her abhorrence of it on the statute book. This law was 
in effect annulled by the demand of a solid New England, in 
the convention of 1787, of the right to continue that trade for 
twenty years, as condition precedent to union. The right was 
demanded to import slaves to Virginia against the will of 
Virginia. Nor was this all. The power of amendment incor- 
porated into the Constitution, by the vote of solid New Eng- 
land, was inhibited from touching this right to import slaves 
for twenty years. It is true for this twenty years' sleep of 
the law, South Carolma and Georgia united with New Eng- 
land, but the former States could have accomplished nothing 
without the latter. George Mason and James Madison en- 
tered their ineffectual protest. "Twenty years," said Madi- 
son, "will produce all the mischief that can be apprehended 
from the liberty to import slaves." It should not surprise, if 
thereafter the unsparing imprecation poured on the vendee 
in this matter should have been resented when proceeding 
from the vendor, so decisively particeps criminis; in fact, so 
preponderantly particeps as to have been conclusive cause. 
It was not slavery ; it was the slave trade which John Wesley 
branded as "the sum of all villanies." 

One decade after the last profits had been reaped by Old 
England and by New England from this compendious 
"villainy," on the application of Missouri for admission to the 
union, the conscience of the North became active for the repro- 
bation and prohibition of slavery therein. It was natural for 
the South to have thought and said: You who sold us this 
property for love of gold, do not strike us as exactly the 
apostles to curtail or contract the value of it for love of God ! 
as no sign comes of your willingness to curtail or contract for 
the love of God the gold you were keen to receive for the sale. 
Upon the ear of the world's great Democrat and earliest 
emancipator, the Missouri Compromise fell "like a firebell in 
the night. "It was," Jefferson wrote, "under the false 
front of lessening the evils of slavery, but with the real view 
of producing a geographical division of parties." With a 
prophet's pen he wrote: "A geographical line coinciding 

23 



with a marked principle, moral or political, will never be oblit- 
erated, and every new invitation will mark it deeper and 
deeper. ' ' To Lafayette he wrote : " It is not a moral ques- 
tion, but one merely of power ... to raise a geograph- 
ical principle for the election of a president." John Quincy 
Adams noted in his diary: "The discussion disclosed a 
secret. It revealed the basis for a new oi'ganization of 
parties. ' ' 

By the will of Mr. Custis, the slaves of his estate were to 
be emancipated five years after his death. The time having 
arrived in 1862, Lee, son-in-law and executor, caused to be 
spread upon the records of the Hustings Court in Richmond 
the necessary writing to effect the immediate emancipation 
of all the slaves at Arlington, Romancoke and the White 
House. The few slaves which had come to him in his own 
right he had emancipated years before. Clearly Lee had not 
in view the retention of slaves by himself and had no per- 
sonal interest in the retention or possession of them by others. 
We have his own words for the grounds of his action : "We 
had, I was satisfied, sacred principles to maintain, and rights 
to defend, for which we were in duty bound to do our best, 
even if we perished in our endeavor." After hostilities had 
closed, he said: "I fought against the people of the North 
because I believed they were seeking to wrest from tlio people 
of the South their dearest rights." 

At the time of the Revolution, the right of a people to re- 
voke abused power was thought to have been justified and 
fortified in the Mother Country by the Revolution of 1688. 
It may be assumed that Lee had read and honored the fore- 
thought of one of his own blood in the natal day of Union. 
In October, 1787, Richard Henry Lee wrote to Edmimd 
Randolph: "The representatives of the seven Northern 
States, as they have a majority, can by law create a most op- 
pressive monopoly upon the five Southern States, whose 
circumstances and productions are essentially different; 
although not a single man of these voters is representative 
of or amenable to the people of the Southern States. Can 
such a set of men be, with the least semblance of truth, called 
representatives of them they make laws for?" The presence 
of the minority, under such conditions, would not give con- 
sent of the governed, but only the futile fiction of consent. 

The charm of exercising dominion over what is another's 
did not begin, and did not end, with property in slaves. _ From 
an early day, the problem has excited the ardors of cupidity — 
how to capture the strength of the whole in the interest of a 
part. Such capture was intended, and for the time accom- 
plished, by a bill which passed Congress in 1828, known to 
fame as the "Bill of Abominations." The Lee of Revolution- 
ary fame, had he been living, would have seen therein, 
impending over the South, the presence of doctrines, incom- 

24 




General Robert E. Lee 

Bust as shown in equestrian statue which surmounts monument. 



patible with the principles of our government. It was an 
enactment to employ the taxing power, to support private 
persons in their occupations, by augmenting the price of what 
they had to sell to the consumer who had to buy : an imposi- 
tion upon the self-sustaining industries of the country, to 
enable other industries, not self-sustaining, to prosper as 
otherwise they would not ; a measure to foster inroads upon 
the harvests of agriculture to oil the wheels of maiiuf acture ; 
apon the harvests of the South for the manufactures of the 
North. It was not legislation to raise revenue for federal 
exigence; but pro tanto to prohibit revenue by prohibition 
pro tanto of the imports which would yield it. Fifteen years 
prior to the War between the States, it was officially computed 
that the self-sustaining industries of the country were taxed 
in this indirect way in the sum of $80,000,000 annually ; none 
of which went into' the coffers of the government, but all into 
the pockets of the protected. That the citizen's private purse 
shall be taken for no other than a public purpose is the canon 
of free government. To the beneficiaries of exemption from 
the competitive strife to which the world of man (one might 
add, the world of animal and nature) is ordained, doubtless 
the same radiated as heavenly bounty. For them who were 
not exempted, but the more heavily subjected, pari passu, it 
would rise up as the licensed brigandage of power ; the name 
of patriotism for the reality of booty. 

A son of Virginia and of genius, John Eandolph, of Roan- 
oke, thus expressed for himself and his Commonwealth the 
enormity of the measure : "I will put it into the power of no 
man, or set of men, who ever lived to tax me without my con- 
sent. It is wholly immaterial whether this is done without 
my having any representative at all, or as was done in the 
case of the tariff law, by a phalanx, stern and inexorable, who 
having the power prescribe to me the law I shall obey. . . . 
The whole slaveholding country; the whole of it, from the 
Potomac to Mexico, was placed under the ban and anathema 
of a majority of two. " Knowing, as few did, how to lay open 
in a sentence the leaven of the Pharisees, he branded this 
tariff of 1828 as the movement "to run the principle of 
patronage against that of patriotism. ' ' A reign of patronage 
for the profit of the patrons, of necessity, would shift federal 
union from a moral to a material basis. It erects a machine 
of government to be oiled and burnished by abuse of govern- 
ment ; wherein the incentive to victory would be the spoils to 
the victors. It would be power cemented by bribes. The 
champion of civil liberty (if happily he succeed) will always 
have cause to say with Demosthenes, "By resisting his bribes, 
I conquered Philip. " 

In the years between 1850 and 1852, a statesman second 
to none of 'his own time, or, indeed, of any time, pointed out 
"how protection, the most insidious form of privilege, ren- 

35 



dered honest government dififieult, and equal government im- 
possible ; how industrial selfishness, which did not scruple to 
beg favors from the lawmakers, would go on to demand these 
favors as a right, nor hesitate to keep them alive by cor- 
ruption."* 

The altruistic banner under which such fight is made is 
the homage of appearance to reality. 

A space of thirty years was filled with the conflict of 
tendencies and countei'tendencies. 

The principle at issue with these restrictive measures is 
not of political economy only. It is part of the gospel of man. 
Man is the creature of exchange. The principle is moral and 
social, no less than political. It pervades humanity. Man is 
the exchanging creature. In exchange he lives, and moves 
and has his being; emphatically his growth; wealth of 
knowledge, of ideas, of affections, augments with the ex- 
changes in which he participates. The opportunity of wealth 
is smitten as exchanges are intercepted. To shut in strength 
is to shut out strength. Social life is a bureau of exchange. 
The ties of kindred, the offices of friendship, are expressions 
of exchanges. How many times a man is able to exchange his 
properties, faculties, sjTnpathies; in a word, his humani- 
ties — so many times he is a man. A complete science of com- 
merce were a science of life. Puissance is exchange — of mind 
with mind, of heart with heart ; of efficiencies ; of spirituali- 
ties. The union of forces for the swap of resources were the 
true federation of the world. To seek to increase wealth by 
inhibition of exchange is as if one were to seek to increase 
the volume of a river, by drjdng up the spring from which 
it flows. 

It is a satisfaction to recall, that until the strife ceased 
to be moral and political, the South prevailed in the combat. 
The measure of 1828 was indeed aggravated by that of 1832 ; 
but in that decade the force of reason was of sufficient 
strength to repel the invasion of force; and by the historic 
sliding scale into the future, the evil was abated. After par- 
tial interruption in 1842, the tariff of 1846, argued so ably, 
that in 1857, committees composed in fair part of Northern 
men, made reductions practically to a revenue basis. Experi- 
ence had been the great expounder. The confutation of the 
sophisters had been complete. Fact had vindicated logic. 
Beginning in 1833, the refutations came, but from geographic 
grasp ; not from economic justice. For the revocation of the 
result, the outcry of free soil was the sword of Brennus in 
the scale. This forged a rage deaf as the sea to the gathering- 
storms. 

In 1833 began the conventions which assembled to arraign 
ihe South for the sin of slavery, and to subordinate to this 



*The Life and Times of Cavour, by Wm. Eoscoe Tbayer, p. 130. 
26 



every tie of interest and tradition. As in the beginning, the 
slavery for which it was held righteous to crucify Virginia, 
had been forced upon her by the sulf rages of New England; 
so now, twenty-five years after the cessation of the slave 
trade, her effort to teiminate the evil for which she was not 
responsible, was arrested by the others who were. At the 
very moment of these inflammations, there were well started 
movements in the border States to perfect schemes of gradual 
emancipation. In the Virginia House of Delegates the meas- 
ure lacked onlj^ a few votes of a majority. The genial philan- 
thropy of freeing another man's slave was initiated at the 
time when Virginians were voting to free their own. At the 
Peace Conference, assembled at the invitation of Virginia 
in 1861, Mr. Ewing, of Ohio, said of the efforts of Virginia 
thirty years earlier : ' ' The act for the gradual abolition of 
slavery was, I believe, lost by a single vote." He was not 
quite accurate as to tliis, but the vote was exceedingly close. 
Mr. Ewing proceeded : * ' The North has taken this business 
of emancipation into its hands, and from the day she did so 
we hear no more of emancipation in Virginia." The Rev. 
Nehemiah Adams, whose last act before leaving Boston to 
seek Southern skies for a sick daughter, had been to join the 
remonstrances of New England clergymen against the 
Kansas and Nebraska bill, wrote later: "The South was on 
the eve of abolishmg slavery. The abolitionists arose and 
put it back within its innermost entrenchments." As late as 
1845, an article appeared in the Richmond Whig, advocating 
the abolition of slavery, and stating that but for the intem- 
perance of Northern fanatics it would be accomplished." 

Wlienever the day arrives to break the seal of facts it has 
been found useful to confine, a striking contrast will be read 
between the offices of the States, which in their own boun- 
daries had ample jurisdiction over the status of the negro 
race, and the ceaseless imprecations hurled by the same 
States on others, in respect to whose jurisdiction in this mat- 
ter their own was foreign. In 1865, Oliver P. Morton said in 
Indiana: "We wholly exclude them" — the negroes — "from 
voting; we exclude them from the public schools, and make 
it unlawful and criminal for them to come into the State. No 
negro who has come into Indiana since 1850 can make a valid 
contract. He cannot acquire a title to a piece of land, because 
the law makes the deed void, and every man who gives him 
employment is liable to prosecution and fine." It is for his 
own, not for his neighbor's sins, that the saint who wins our 
reverence smites his breast. When the negro came with his 
master's consent, no place could be found for him. He was 
only welcome when he came without it. Prior to the 
fifteenth amendment, from the Delaware to the Oregon, 
love "for a man and a brother" grew great by this ex- 
ample. Plutarch tells of one who in a fit of anger threw a 

37 



stoue at Lycurgus, knocking out one of his eyes. The horri- 
fied Spartans gave the culprit to Lycurgus to be his slave, 
that he might execute his wUl upon him. At a subsequent 
time, Lycurgus came to the Assembly with his slave and said : 
"I received this man from your hands a dangerous criminal; 
I return him to you an honest and useful citizen." After the 
fifteenth amendment, largely by the insistence of Morton, had 
been added to the record, to New England, and to Old Eng- 
land, the South might have said : ' ' We received this man 
from you an ungoverned, if not dangerous, criminal. We 
return him to the American branch of you, as one in your 
own esteem worthy to make laws for the federal imiou, and 
the States comprising it." 

Beyond doubt there were those who honestly felt it their 
religious duty, without thoiaght of and regardless of existing 
compact witli others, to do all in their power to extirpate 
African slavery as the shameless sin of Satan. There were 
others who had thought of reward, and saw the political ad- 
vantage of appropriating this sincerity and identifjang them- 
selves with it. 

From a New England source comes to us, what, for this 
occasion is oifered, as a working theory of this development. 
Mr. William Chauncey Fowler, in his book, "The Sectional 
Controversy" (pviblished in 1862), narrates this incident, 
felt at the time by himself to be significant: "Some fifteen 
or twenty years ago, when Northern petitions signed by men, 
women, children and negroes (for the abolition of slavery) 
were flooding the floor of the lower House, as a leading mem- 
ber of Congress, who afterwards was a member of a Presi- 
dential Cabinet, was coming out from a heated debate, he was 
asked by the present writer, an old college friend: 'Will you 
inform me what is the real reason why Northern members 
encourage these petitions?' After considering a moment, he 
said to me: 'The real reason is that the South will not let 
us have a tariff, and we touch them where they will feel it. ' " 

At the breaking out of the war events brought directly 
home to Lee the virulence with which were assailed princi- 
ples, which by hereditary conviction he felt ' ' in duty bound to 
maintain. ' ' Li the fall of 1859 enmity to the South assumed 
the shape of an armed foray, which in dead of night came 
down upon Virginia, with intent to redden the skies with the 
torch of servile insurrection. The leader was tried and hmig. 
His body was carried North for ovation and homage. In the 
words of Emerson, he liad made "the gallows sacred as the 
cross." By the year 1860, the apostle of hate had displaced 
the Twelve Apostles. The assassin with the knife, poised to 
be driven to the hilt in the heart of Virginia, was the Saint. 
In the autumn of 1910, one who had been tenant of the White 
House, rendered his tribute to John Brown as one "who 
rendered the greatest service ever rendered this country;" 

28 



who "stood for heroic valor, grim energy, fierce fidelity to 
high ideals;" who "embodied the inspiration of the men of 
his generation." At Harper's Ferry, confronting this ideal 
of the North, stood, in immortal protest, Robert E. Lee. 
Then and there were brought face to face the opposite ideals. 
No! — the idol versus the ideal! 

In the fruit of the spirit which beheld, in the sentenced at 
Harper's Perry, a glory as of a new sacred writ, one who 
shared the blood of the Revolutionary Lees did not have to 
strive mightily to read signs of a tradition of free government 
sacrificed to a chimera; the true "irrepressible conflict" re- 
jected for the sham. For the full fruition of a geographic 
triumph, economic sympathies which hitherto had prevailed, 
succumbed to the tempest's breath. 

In 1860 it was fully realized that the way, with assurance, 
to make a majority permanent, was to make it geographical. 
When liberty says: "Death to the robbers," what more 
natural than for the robbers to say : "Then death to liberty." 
"Cruel as death, and hungry as the grave" is the fate meted 
out, when inequality of taxation is the prize of geographical 
preponderance. The apple of discord was the golden apple. 
The idol had conquered the ideal. Hinc concussa fides et 
multis utile helium. 

The tragical situation was that which Jefferson foresaw — 
"a geographical principle for the election of president." A 
campaign for power on this basis is of a nature to call on 
force to fulfill the office of consent. From one high, and justly 
so, in Federal Councils; a statesman worthy of the name, 
whose annomiced intention to withdraw from the Senate, will, 
when the event takes place, create a gap not easily to be 
filled; from this eminent patriot have fallen words which 
justify attention: "The first seventy years of the Republic 
are gone. They were years in which there were no influences 
sufficiently strong to prevent the powers of government from 
operating in the manner in which the Fathers expected them 
to operate. They were years in which there were no influ- 
ences sufficiently strong to turn the agencies of government 
into the agencies of particular interests, or to wholly private 
and selfish purposes. But that day is not now."* 

This version from one so eminent would seem to warrant 
the assertion : The South did not desert the Union, the Union 
deserted the South. For the Septuagint of Honor, so ex- 
tolled, the South stood; for this fell. St. Paul tells us, that 
the love of money is the root of all evil. One mightier, speak- 
ing through the vicissitude of human rise and fall, inculcates 
the love of justice is the root of all virtue. These loves or 
passions wrestle together for the Soul— self and duty. Here 



*Hon. Wm. E. Borah in U. S. Senate, Jamiaiy 11, 1911. 
39 



is the irrepressible conflict. A strange mystery — the soul of 
man, wherein God and beast incessantly encounter. 

It was in Norfolk, in the year 1907, that the chivalrous 
officer and gentleman, Gen. Lindsay L. Lomax, gentle as he 
was brave, being in attendance on the Confederate Reimion, 
and at the time one of the commissioners of this park, ad- 
dressed efforts prompted by a soldier's chivalry, for the 
erection of a memorial on this spot, not to leaders only, but to 
Confederate followers worthy of great leaders. Resolutions 
were passed at his suggestion, and, with the approval of the 
Secretary of War, to erect a memorial to Virginia's soldiers 
on the field of Gettysburg, and, in 1911, in the Legislature of 
Virginia, a bill was passed, authorizing the memorial. The 
gallant general to whom the initiation of this movement is 
due, afterwards with hope and affection watched over it to 
the day of his death. His physical presence is denied us. 
His spirit, we may be sure, hovers over us this day. At the 
base of the pedestal you see a group of several figures, in 
whose bearing and expression will be read the fixed constancy 
of conviction, wliich a glorious art has stamped with a glori- 
ous immortality. The sacred sic semper of Vii'ginia is borne 
aloft by one, whose countenance emulates the emblem's 
purity. Before the day of this battle, Jackson, looking at his 
hardy files, had exclaimed: "Who could not win battles with 
such men as these ! ' ' And Lee said : ' ' The sublime sight of 
the war was the cheerfulness and alacrity exhibited by the 
army, ia pursuit of the enemy, under all the trials and priva- 
tions to which it was exposed." An army steeled in battle 
shared the jeopardy of the captains, and was yokefellow in 
the glory. Commander and commanded were one; courage 
mated courage ; constancy, constancy. 

On the summit of this monument rides the bright effigy of 
one who has been called the quintessence of Virginia. In this 
concentrated image of one Commonwealth is the reflection of 
sister States, whose sons were brothers of her own. In this 
grace, as in a mirror, we see the cause for which the rider 
fought with all his mighty soul, and sacrificed as he fought. 
We see the Cause impersonated in the Captain. All that 
ancestry could do for Lee quite well had been done. Yet, in 
the family of fame, he was "Son of his own works." From 
early manhood until 1861, this son of Virginia had known 
every affluence of fortune, every prestige of family a new 
world could bestow. Yet no affluence, no promotion, no pre- 
possession of favor could stifle the affluence of his own soul. 
The five talents would seem to have been his own by nature's 
endowment. Duteous energy made the five talents ten. The 
sacred opportunity of service created a sacred opportunity 
of rising by service. From 1865 to the day of his death, he 
was visited by every adversity a malign fate could hurl 
against him. From citizenship in the State of which he was 

30 



consummate flower he was excluded. Practically outlawed, 
he died a paroled prisoner of war. A life wherein no respon- 
sibility was shirked ; every season for it met, towered to the 
end; witnessing to the power of a great nature, greatly spent 
for others, and in sacrifice of things mortal finding immor- 
tality. 

There is lustre in the moment, when putting aside the offer 
(known to have been made to him) to take command of the 
Union armies, he mireservedly gave his heart forever to his 
Mother State, and with both hands emliraced her perils. Well 
he knew, none could better know, the assured future from 
which he withdrew. In the army from which he then resigned 
he had already won renown ; in that service had traveled far 
and wide, and made himself familiar with the topography, 
which meant so much for the invader with a fleet. For him to 
leave the Potomac was to leave the fair home upon its banks, 
to be torn from him and dismantled. As few could know, he 
knew that the war against the cause which he espoused was 
the war of the many with the few; of them armed with the 
means and munitions of war against a South practically des- 
titute. There could be in him no misapprehension of the 
odds. At the crisis of federal history, and of his own, two 
crowns were offered to him, the crown of gold and the crown 
of thorns. He lifted the latter to his brow, and never was 
heard from him a murmur against the destiny of duty. Every 
gift of fortune had been showered on him, but he was greater 
than the gifts. Every blow of adversity was rained upon 
him, but he was greater than the blows. The commission Vir- 
ginia laid in his hands, he accepted with these words : 

' ' Trusting in Almighty God, an approving conscience, 
and the aid of my fellow citizens, I devote myself to the 
service of my native State, in whose behalf alone will I 
ever again draw my sword." 

In an address which should be indelibly impressed on 
every Southern man and woman, both as chapter in a great 
life and pattern of the chaste and lucid grace, which is a 
master's token, there is asked and answered the question, 
what was then the state and the cause for which was plighted 
this supreme devotion. 

*"And what was that native State to whose defense he 
henceforth devoted his matchless sword? It was a Common- 
wealth older than the Union; it was the first abode of free- 
dom in the Western world; it was the scene of the earliest 
organized resistance to the encroachments of the Mother 
country ; it was the birthplace of the immortal leader of our 
Eevolutionary annies, and of many of the architects of the 

*Addre88 delivered at the Dedication of the Monument to General Robert 
Edward Lee at Richmond, Va., May 29, 1890, by Col. Archer Anderson. 

31 



Federal constitution ; it was the central seat of that doctrine 
of State Sovereignty, sanctioned by tlie great names of Jef- 
ferson and Madison; it was a land rich in every gift of the 
earth and sky — richer still in its race of men, brave, frugal, 
pious, loving honor, but fearing God; it was a land hallowed 
by memories of an almost unbroken series of patriotic tri- 
umphs; but now after the wreck and ruin of four years 
unsuccessful war, consecrated anew by deeds of heroism and 
devotion, whose increasing lustre will borrow a brighter radi- 
ance from their sombre background of suffering and defeat." 

The fellow citizens, on whose cooperation Lee trusted, did 
not disappoint him. When he was of military age the mer- 
chant closed his ledger, the student threw down his lexicon and 
shouldered a musket, the farmer rode his best horse into the 
field. Students seeking a higher scholarship in colleges 
abroad, postponed culture to report for enlistment in the 
ranks. The masses and the classes (if there were classes) 
equally reported for service. Churches melted their bells into 
guns; women cast their jewels into the treasury. In the 
tender hand of woman fell the gentler ministrations of the 
war, as from her heart stole the subtler inspirations. With 
the sjTupathy which "never faileth" — the sympathy of 
woman — she was minister to the sick and angel to the dying. 
The beautiful forgetfulness, the sweet unconsciousness of 
self, which glides into the consciousness of others and imparts 
a helping grace, was her supremacy. Purer devotion to a 
cause never was beheld. As the pieties which blend in the 
fabric of cathedrals record the worship in the work, so these 
constancies discover intimate traits which went into the fibre 
of the State. 

It was when that skillful and gifted soldier, Joseph E. 
Johnston (to whom justice has not yet been done), fell 
wounded at the close of the first day's fight at Seven Pines, 
that Lee was summoned to take command of the force oppos- 
ing McClellan's army, then so close to Richmond, that the 
church bells could be heard in their camps. In assuming com- 
mand of that army of Northern Virginia, which he never left, 
which never left him, Lee 's grasp of the conditions was shown 
in activity which was immediate, and in effect which was 
electrical. First happened the daring raid of Stuart, sent out 
by Lee to locate the right flank of McClellan's army. Stuart 
did this and more. He rode clear around the rear of 
McClellan's army, and deliverd his report of what existed to 
Lee in Richmond; raising himself once and forever to the 
eminence which abides with him today. Thenceforward the 
black plume of that true knight was seen waving at the front 
whenever daring of the man on horseback was demanded. 
The next step was also one of daring. With an intuitive clair- 
voyance Lee read, as in a book, the apprehensions in the 
Wliite House. None knew better how to ring the alarm bell 

32 




§ I 



rjl 



at one point when intending to fall upon another. Already 
the wizard of the valley had so alarmed, as to cause the 
diversion from McClellan (when on the way to him) of 
McDowell. To confirm fears of impending tempests from 
Stonewall Jackson, Lee now despatches to Staunton (having 
little doubt the numbers would be magnified) Whiting's divi- 
sion from the troops he had in hand, together with Lawton's 
brigade, just arrived from Georgia. In reality these brigades 
were destined to meet at Charlottesville with Jackson, and 
with him hasten to sustain the shock of arms preparing for 
McClellan. 

Greatly planned and ordered as the Seven Days' Fight 
had been, it was less perfectly fulfilled, bravely as it was 
fought, or a trimnph more complete would have ensued. That 
achieved drove McClellan to the shelter of his gunboats on the 
James. The problem then arose how to remove the invading 
army from the James to the Potomac. Again recourse was 
had to Lincoln's fears for Washington. Jackson was directed 
to move northward and place himself in a position, if oppor- 
tunity presented, to strike in detail the forces of Pope as they 
moved South. As brigade after brigade, division after divi- 
sion, went from Lee to Jackson, larger divisions were ordered 
from McClellan to Pope. With an audacity of which success 
was vindication, Lee withdrew McClellan 's force to Wash- 
ington, by withdrawing his own from Eichmond, until, finally, 
North and South once more stood face to face on the plains 
of Manassas. A marvelous insight had read Pope as Lincoln 
and McClellan had been read. Lee and Jackson had been 
unread. Methods and motives which none could fathom per- 
plexed each change of front; the means to vanish into dark- 
ness when capture was anticipated ; the rapid seizure of 
opportunity ; the skill to create the impression of flight in the 
mind of the opponent, down to the time the bolt out of the 
blue descended, continuously confounded. Mystery twined 
around the movements and designs of these pastmasters of 
the master strokes of war. When the particular movement 
was detected, the design remained impenetrable, until un- 
veiled in reverse. The Confederate files felt themselves in 
the hands of leaders competent to define the scene of wrath, 
and "tell the doubtful battle where to rage." Under these 
kings of strife a force of fifty thousand drove a force of eighty 
thousand into the fortifications of Washington and Alex- 
andria. 

This success made temptation great to transfer the scene 
of battle to the north of the Potomac ; thus recruit resources, 
possibly numbers, and, by a possible victory in the neighbor- 
hood of the White House, secure foreign recognition. The 
Potomac was crossed, and, with the odds heavily against him, 
Lee awaited battle at Sharpsburg. Great as was the dis- 
crepancy of force, it cannot be known what might have been 

33 



the result had not someone carelessly let fall the order issued 
by Lee for the concentration of his army.* This important 
document, shortly after it was written, armed McClellan with 
authentic knowledge of Lee's plans and exigencies. I pause 
in recurring to the field of Sharpsburg for the mention of a 
single incident never before, I imagine, witnessed on the field 
of arms ; the idolized commander-in-chief of the army in tlie 
thick of the battle shower, reining in his steed, for a hurried 
word to his youngest son, then a begrimed cannoneer of the 
Rockbridge Battery. Thirty-five thousand against eighty- 
seven thousand for two days stoutly stood against reiterated 
assault; for the whole of the third stood awaiting attack 
which was not renewed; then, without serious molestation, 
recrossed to the Virginia side. Not until the following Octo- 
ber was a movement to follow seriously made. 

I will not delay to dwell on that joint marvel of Lee and 
Jackson, known to fame as Chaucellorsville, where from what 
was supposed to be a movement of retreat, descended the 
supernatural stroke. La a contribution to the London Spec- 
tator of February 24, 1912, the last words of the hero who 
shattered Hooker's right and rear, thus feelingly are given: 

" 'Let us cross over the river and rest under the 
shade of the trees.' These were the farewell words — 
of whom? Of some poet, sighing for the idlesse of 
Arcady; of some worn out spirit drooping for the cool- 
ing stream ? No, they come from the lips of one who had 
never known or asked for repose or shade, whose cross- 
ing of rivers had hitherto been done in the face of blasts 
of hostile shells; from a stern, unresting man, not old, 
but under forty years, not exhausted, but in the full tide 
of gigantic enterprise, not peaceful, but the fiercest sol- 
dier of his age — one Stonewall Jackson, dying of his 
hurts on the field of Chaucellorsville. They were his 
last words, closing a series of sharply uttered com- 
mands — 'Order Hill to prepare for action!' 'Pass the 
infantry to the front ! ' Then very quietly the beautiful, 
almost metrical sentences recorded above, and straight- 
way, says his fine historian, 'the soul of the great captain 
passed into the peace of God. ' . . . Often does death 
listening, 'dull, cold-eared' legatee, for his assured 
entail — often does he hear his own undoing in the very 
signal of his inheritance. That last faint whisper carries 
the Parthian shot of his escaping enemy, the Soul; he 
hears his very victim triumph ; he hath, indeed, no vic- 
tory, perishing himself like the lion on the horns of the 
stricken deer.' " 



*Col. W. H. Taylor observes: "The loss of this battle order constituted one 
of the pivots on which turned the event of the war." 

34 



When victory at Chancellorsville, called by Colonel Hen- 
derson "the most brilliant feat of arms of the nineteenth 
century," was complete, Lee, hearing of Jackson's wounds, 
uttered the words : ' ' He has lost his left arm ; I have lost my 
right." Later, when he received Jackson's congratulations 
on the victory, he bade Colonel Marshall tell him: "The 
victory was his, and the congratulations are due him." 
Colonel Marshall says : "I forgot the genius that won the 
day, in my reverence for the generosity that refused the 
glory." Hero spake to hero. 

With greater cause for confidence that when the preced- 
ing year he faced the odds of Sharpsburg, Lee now planned 
the renewal of aggressive movement, north of the Potomac; 
by this to recall Hooker from the South side, and, if success 
should follow, to relieve the strain in Middle Tennessee. The 
first purpose was signally achieved. By the advance of the 
Army of Northern Virginia northward, the Union camps 
were swept from the Rappahannock. 

At no time was the strategic prescience of Lee more bril- 
liantly displayed than in the movement which transferred the 
seat of war from the Rappahannock to the Susquehanna. 
Ewell had thrown his corps around Milroy at Winchester and 
Martinsburg before Hooker realized the Confederate general 
had broken camp at Hamilton's Crossing. Leaving behind 
him a bewildered foe, Lee signalized his march to the Potomac 
by victorious engagements at Winchester, Berryville, and 
Martinsburg. Longstreet and A. P. Hill had crossed the 
Potomac on the 25th of June. On the 27th they were at 
Chambersburg. On the same day Ewell, with two divisions, 
was near Carlisle, and Early in the neighborhood of York. 
Lee's infantry troops were now in position for an advance 
upon Harrisburg, and equally for prompt concentration to 
the east or west of South Mountain, to meet the advance of 
Hooker's army, should it advance from Frederick. 

Not quite two months after Chancellorsville, Lee with an 
army confident of victory stood before these heights of 
Gettysburg. Here for three summer days victory trembled 
in the balance. It was a battle which took place, not as had 
been intended, and when finally determined did not fulfil the 
orders by the Southern general. Distinguished soldiers com- 
petent to do so, of North and South, here and abroad, have 
with critical skill reviewed the stages and phases of this 
memorable field. Claiming no such competence, I will not 
seek to repeat the twice and thrice told tale. 

At the dedication of this monument to sons of Virginia, 
whose devotion unto death to their Mother was and is her 
exceeding great reward, whose glory on this field, as on all 
others, is her own, I will briefly speak of them. On the fight 
of the third and final day, the crisis of onset was accorded to 
Virginia. Pickett 's division was designated to lead. On this 

35 



eventful afternoon, with the steadiness of conviction and of 
discipline, his three brigades moved out. On the heights in 
front awaited the numbers they knew to be greater than their 
own. On those heights was every breastwork finished, every 
reserve posted, every gun in position, in readiness for the 
assault. As this chosen band advanced a rage of fury from 
the heights swept the field they had to cross. The thinned 
ranks of the Virginians, each second growing thinner, did not 
halt under the fury, Kemper and Garnett in advance, Armis- 
tead following. Kemper rode back to Armistead, who 
marched on foot, and said: "Armistead, I am going to 
charge those heights and carry them ; and I want you to sup- 
port me. " "I will do it, ' ' Armistead replied. ' ' Look at my 
line; it never looked better on dress parade." 

Onward swept the thin, gray line to the muzzles of the 
guns, and ever above the fury of the fray rose the "yell," 
which on so many fields had floated as a trumpet to inspire. 
Few were the colonels of regiments who survived that hail of 
death. Hunton, of the 8th, was carried in a bloody blanket 
from the field. His commission to be brigadier dates from 
this rush ' ' to glory or the grave. ' ' The three brigadiers fell 
"with their backs to the field," two — Garnett and Armis- 
tead — not again, in this life, to rise in the body. Putting his 
black hat on the point of a sword, in front of his line of battle, 
Armistead led what was left of the advance. With hat still 
waving from sword as plume of onset, at forty yards of the 
stone wall he gave the order to charge. Leading his men 
afoot, he sprang upon the enemy's works. One hundred and 
fifty men, still living, followed him beyond the stone wall, 
passed the earthworks, seized the guns whose canister had 
torn their ranks. For a few "immense instants" they stood 
there conquerors; unsupported, they in turn went down be- 
fore the reserves, which now poured under Hancock. Sword 
in hand, Armistead fell in the act of grasping a captured 
cannon to turn it on the foe. 

Lee was intense witness to this failure. No other could 
more perfectly take in that it meant failure of the hope which 
inspired the second crossing of the Potomac; the hope of a 
speedy termination of the war by Confederate success. In 
the presence of the greatest disappointment he had known, 
or thereafter knew in battle, the world might excuse him if in 
that moment his wonderful poise for once forsook him; 
might excuse and forgive, if in that moment the fortitude of 
his patience had expired, and, as other generals here and 
abroad have done, he had shielded himself from criticism for 
the outcome by placing the blame for it on others. But what 
he said was : "All this has been my fault." When his great- 
est victory was won, Lee gave the praise to Jackson. When 
his chief, if not his only repulse, had been sustained, he took 
the blame upon himself. Whatever he felt, with a majestic 
silence then and ever afterwards was mastered his emotion. 

36 



He gave to another the praise of victory, but took upon him- 
self the blame of failure. His words at Chancellorsville and 
Gettysburg of themselves are victories. Defeat, like victory, 
hath opportunities. The imapproached glory of Lee in the 
bible of heroism will be read in the words : "It was all my 
fault." It is this immortal moment which the glorious art to 
be unveiled today will perennially rehearse in a monument 
worthy of the grandeur. This grandeur it is the glowing pur- 
pose of our artist to perpetuate. 

When duty called Lee to the side of Virginia and the 
South, he espoused as he well knew the side of an agricul- 
tural people, with no arms, no factories, no munitions. Until 
near the close of the war, only from the Tredegar works in 
Eichmond and afterwards from the works in Rome, Georgia, 
could guns be turned out. Over these constructions presided 
the constructive skill of that great ordnance officer, who also 
assumed responsibility for needed munitions. Wlien in the 
first days of the war rumors went forth of the approach of 
the Pawnee upon Richmond, citizens rushed out with shot 
guns — some, it is said, with pick axes — to defend against her. 
But in the volleys which poured from flank to flank, on the 
3d day of July Parrott gun replied to Parrott gim; the 
Napoleon in the valley to the Napoleon on the hill. There 
was no munition plant. The creative genius of Josiah Gorgas, 
the ordnance officer of the Confederacy, supplied the defi- 
ciency; supplied the army with ammunition so long as an 
army was left to be supplied, a creation as it seems out of 
formless mass. The rending thunders which roared from 
right to left of our lines at Gettysburg were the magic of his 
mind's proficiency. Worthy to be enrolled by the side of Lee 
and Jackson is the genius of Gorgas, who, as with the mystery 
of original creation, made everything out of nothing. All the 
accesible smokehouses south of the Potomac were scraped by 
this war}', solicitous, indefatigable man, for saltpetre drip- 
pings of the hams which, from the time of which memory ran 
not to the contrary, had been ciired therein. The marvel is 
akin to that of the Confederate officers who created a navy 
out of nothing; who, as has been said: "Without navy yards, 
or naval artillery, had to build ironclads in cornfields. ' ' * 

The results attained in the three days of July did not 
excite excessive avidity to close again with Lee 's army. The 
first battle of consequence which followed, I will take leave to 
bring before you, as evidence of the very narrow extent to 
which the spirit of the troops was affected by the result at 
Gettysburg. 

At eight o'clock on the morning of May 4, 1864, Grant 
(now commander-in-chief) was satisfied the orders he had 
given would carry his army across the wilderness by the 
evening of the 5th. Without waiting for Longstreet (lately 

*N. Y. Evening Post, April 27, 1917. 
37 



returned from East Tennessee) to come up; with little more 
than two-thirds of a force (so far inadequate when complete), 
Lee, with a startling swiftness, sprang on Grant, who per- 
force halted his march across the wilderness to concentrate 
for battle in it. By an onset, as impetuous as it was unex- 
pected, the Union lines were forced back on their right. On 
their left five divisions under Hancock were held at bay by 
Heth and Wilcox. But here, after stubborn fight with stub- 
born foe, the two Confederate divisions, with ammunition ex- 
hausted, strength exhausted, and lines in places bent back 
and broken, were in no plight to resume action in the morn- 
ing. This was known to Lee, and the divisions were instructed 
that Longstreet would relieve them. It was well nigh certain 
that they would give way if attacked. It was certain they 
would be attacked. One moment before the blow descended 
Longstreet galloped on the field. "My troops are not yet up," 
he said. "I have ridden ahead to find out the situation." As 
he spoke, his voice was drowned in the roar of musketry. As 
the head of Longstreet 's column came upon the scene, the two 
divisions were seen to be giving way. At this critical moment 
two batteries, imder Poague, opened on the left of the road, 
and by their fire gave Longstreet time to form. As the Texas 
brigade under Gregg (Hood's old brigade) moved through 
the guns. General Lee rode on their flank, saluting them as 
old friends from whom he had too long been parted, and, 
pointing to the menace before their eyes, said he himself 
would lead them to victory over it. The fine eye of Lee must 
have glistened with something better than a conqueror's 
pride whenever he recalled the cry with which that veteran 
rank and file sent him to the rear and themselves to the front. 
The name of the warlike man who stepped forth to seize the 
bridle of Traveler and force him and his rider back, I cannot 
give you. A tall, gaunt figure clad in rags and heroic bril- 
liance rises before us for an instant, and then perishes out of 
sight. Lee was checked, his steed reined in, as the brigade 
flung their caps in the air, and, with a shout which was their 
stern farewell, swept onward. It was the leap of Curtius into 
the gulf. Sunrise was shining in their faces as their own sun 
sank. The rising sun was their winding sheet. They closed 
up the ranks over their comrades as they fell, till there was 
no longer a rank to close. They made their bosoms a sheath 
for the thunderbolt. They buried defeat on the field under a 
mound of their own corpses. They stepped to the graves of 
martyrs with the grace of courtiers. They had but an instant 
to think and to act, and they made it one of imperishable 
beauty. The long track of light which followed in the wake 
of their valor, they did not see. Their wilderness was then ; 
their promised land — eternity. The love Lee riveted then, 
and rivets now, is in this scene made moniimental. As the 
clear water of the lake mirrors the mountain on the marge, so 
the spirit of an army caught the human height which towered 

38 



on the edge of every conflict. There, there, thei*e is the flame 
image of Robert Lee ; of the men who trusted him, and whom 
he trusted to the hilt. 

The rest of Field's division arriving, after throwing 
Gregg's Texan s on the left of the road, as has been stated, 
and Benning behind Gregg, and Laws behind Benning, and 
Jenkins behind Laws, Field slipped the leash. The Texas 
brigade had dashed forward as soon as it was formed, with- 
out waiting for the brigades in the rear, and overcame the 
first shock at this point, but with a loss of two-thirds of their 
own number killed and wounded in ten minutes. The gallant 
Benning, with his Georgians, followed with "signally cheer- 
ing results" (Field mentioned in his report), in achieving 
which Benning was wounded and the brigade much cut up. 
Laws' brigade followed, but the enemy was so far checked 
that the losses in this brigade were not so heavy. 

A movement was now directed by Lee which came near to 
complete success. The brigades of Mahone, Anderson and 
Wofford, of which Mahone as senior brigadier was in com- 
mand, were moved beyond the enemy's left, with orders to 
attack on his left and rear. The enemy was at the same 
moment to be attacked in front. In front the enemy was 
started back, at first slowly, until the effect of the flank move- 
ment was felt. As to the effect of this, Mr. Swinton writes : 
"It seemed, indeed, that irretrievable disaster was upon us; 
but in the very torrent and tempest of the attack it suddenly 
ceased, and all was still." The confusion wrought by this 
movement has been stated by a Union officer. Col. Morris 
Schaff, in the Atlantic Monthly of February, 1910: "Every- 
thing on the right of the 19th Maine, 56th and 37th Massachu- 
setts is gone, and they with fragments of other gallant 
regiments that have stood by them, will soon have to go. . . . 
Webb, seeing the day is lost, tells the bitterly-tried regiments 
to scatter, and the wreckage begins. . . . The full stream 
of wreckage begins to float by Hancock at this juncture, and 
he realizes that disaster has come to his entire front. . . . 
But how strange! Wliy do his (Lee's) fresh troops not come 
on and burst through, while Hancock, Carroll, Lyman and 
Rice and scores of officers are trying to rally the men. . . . 
Why do they lose the one chance to complete victory? Yes, 
something had happened, not mysterious, but calamitous on 
the road to complete victory. Longstreet had fallen, shot 
through the right shoulder and throat." "Such were the cir- 
cumstances," wx'ites this Union officer, "into which Lee was 
suddenly thrown at that hour of momentous importance. It 
was an unusual and chafing trial. ... At about 6 o 'clock 
Sheridan, impressed by the state of affairs, told Humphrej' 
that unless the trains were ordered to cross the river, the 
road would be blocked, and it would be impossible for troops 
to get to the ford. What would have happened that after- 

39 



noon among the trains had Longstreet not been wounded and 
had his troops broken through?" 

On the other end of the line Gordon discovered that his 
left overlapped the enemy's right, and, having cause to be- 
lieve the fact unsuspected, submitted a plan of attack on that 
portion of the Union army, which was by his immediate 
superiors overruled. In the closing hours of the day Lee 
foimd opportunity to visit his extreme left. He then ap- 
proved the plan. About sundown Gordon moved out, and, as 
he expected, found the enemy unprepared, their first troops 
caught with their guns stacked. Brigade after brigade was 
broken to pieces before any formation could be had. A nvun- 
ber of prisoners were captiared; among these Generals 
Seymour and Shaler. The Sixth Army Corps was smitten 
with panic. The opportunity and effect was not unlike that 
one year earlier, when the stroke of Jackson fell. Gordon's 
confidence in the victory which would have followed had the 
attack been earlier has received corroboration free from 
bias.* 

The fall of Longstreet and Jenkins on Lee 's right, the fall 
of night upon his left, retained Grant's forces south of the 
Rappahannock. Twice that sixth of Maj^ a second Chancel- 
lorsville was in Lee's grasp, but twice that day a sardonic 
fate snatched it from him. Unequal fate for a moment 
trembled in the balance. Grant now turned to make for Spot- 
sylvania Court House. There he found Lee awaiting him. 
The skill with which in this campaign Lee continuously 
shifted his smaller force, so as to repulse parts of a larger, 
in succession, launched against him, is a page of marvel. On 
June 3d, just about one month after the movement across the 
Rapidan began. Grant for the last time advanced the full 
strength of his army against the lines of Lee. Then, in the 
words of Charles Francis Adams, "did the slaughter of Cold 
Harbor begin." Wlien later in the day orders were issued 
to renew the assault, Swinton writes: "The immobile lines 
pronounced a verdict, silent yet emphatic, against further 
slaughter. ' ' 

Grant's orders for general engagement along the lines 
ended at this point. A stronger weapon than military assault 
was in his hands. The words of a Union ofiicer and gentle- 



•G«n. James H. Wilson in his Memoirs mentions: 

"It will be remembered that those officers (Rawlins and Bowers) had been 
with Grant from the first of the war. . . . Rawlins explained that the first news 
which reached headquarters from the right cave the impression that an over- 
whelming disaster had befallen our line, and tliat although Grant received it with 
his usual self-possession, the coming in of officer after officer with additional 
details soon made it apparent that the General was confronting the greatest 
crisis in his life. . . . Both Rawlins and Bowers concurred in the statement 
that Grant went into his tent, and throwing himself face downward on his cot 
gave way to the greatest emotion. . . . Not till it became apparent that the 
enemy was not pressing his advantage did he entirely recover his composure." 
Under the Old Flag, Vol. I, p. 390. 

40 




o 



o 



man, Mr. Charles Francis Adams, are apposite: "Narrowly- 
escaping destruction at Gettysburg, my next contention is, 
that Lee and the army of Northern Virginia never sustained 
defeat. Finally, it is true, succumbing to exhaustion, to the 
end they were not overthrown in fight. ' ' How, then, was Lee 
overcome, and, with Lee, the South? By the plan of wearing 
out by attrition. To wear out an adversary's numbers 
which could not be replaced by the free sacrifice of his own, 
which could be, was the device. Having in hand at home 
numbers, limited only by the call for them; and Europe to 
draw on for recruits, the gaps in the Union ranks could easily 
be filled. In the army of Lee, each loss was irreparable. For 
Grant, all that was necessary to win out was to keep on losing. 
So Xerxes wore out by attrition the Spartans at Ther- 
mopylae. "Already," cried Grant, "they have robbed the 
cradle and the grave." The conclusion was, when this final 
reinforcement has been spent, the prize will have been won — 
"Government by consent of the governed." 

The attenuated Confederate force stood in the last ditch 
to hold up the sinking banner, or fall with it. Our cause, 
their actions said, shall not fail, if the sacrifice of all we are 
and all we have can save it. While the meagre ration left 
them strength to stand, they stood. We celebrate the mag- 
nanimous soul which poured a river of renown around our 
capital, making a revered history more reverend, which lit up 
the glories of yonder valley with a greater glory ; and in the 
battle roar on this memorable field, changed the rag of gray 
for an immortal robe. In the last hour at Appomattox, the 
servants of dutj^ rallied around the Chief of duty, and laid 
down their arms only when that Chieftain deemed it the part 
of duty so to do. Each man was as the sailor at his post 
when he feels the ship is sinking. It is not success which 
consecrates the strain of life's battle. The nobleness with 
which the battle is fought erects the altar. These sons died 
that we might not live in vain. It has been for us so to live 
that they shall not have died in vain. Let us cherish the faith 
that they who go forth to battle and sacrifice in fulfillment of 
high calling, in sacrifice, win achievement. The bronze figures 
at the base of the monument to be unveiled today will present 
a physical record of that which is more lasting than bronze. 
"There is," said Canon Farrar, "but one real failure in life 
possible, and that is, not to be true to the best one knows." 

Not by fighting, but by famine, was resistance to be sub- 
dued; by war to fireside and field; until, by want of food, 
strength to resist should be quite vanquished — subjugation 
by strangulation. 

Another arrow still remained, wherewith the remaining 
and returning remnant was decreed to be pierced. From no 
eagerness to call back the sharpness of evil days, is reference 
here made to the ' ' rank breath ' ' of Eeconstruction. For this 

41 



the alleged justification was the ill treatment of the Southern 
slaves by the Southern masters to whom by Old and New 
England the slave ancestry had been so industriously sold. 
A word as to the wickedness which was visited with the retri- 
bution. Not forgetting anathema, which is hurled upon those 
days, with some diffidence I will say: If the service of the 
slave had been compulsory, it was a compulsion which had 
liberated from degradation. The white man by his works 
had said to the black man at his back: "Brought to me by 
others as you have been, it is my part to afford the discipline, 
which, of yourselves, you are unable to acquire. The universe 
abandons you. I will protect and direct. ' ' Enmity assumed 
that this slave only lacked opportunity to rise against the 
master. A day came when from the Potomac to the Gulf 
everything was opportune, yet from the slave everything was 
safe. The noble way for one race to conquer another is by 
the development of higher modes of existence in that other. 
So the South conquered the Africans, shipped by Old Eng- 
land and by New England. Southern slavery will hold up the 
noblest melioration of an inferior race, of which history can 
take note — the government of a race incapable of self-govern- 
ment, for a greater benefit to the governed than to the gov- 
ernors. Southern master gave to Southern slave more than 
slave gave to master; and the slave realized it.* Better 
basis for the uplift of inadequacy can no man lay than is laid 
in this. This slavery was the school to redeem from the sloth 
of centuries. A continent of mortal idleness had been ex- 
changed for a continent of vital work. The constraint of 
discipline was a first step from the degeneration of indis- 
cipline. From "the hell of the unfit" the negro had been 
lifted and put in the way of fitness. Freedom, which merely 
means freedom from work, is freedom to rot — not a thing 
for which to shed blood or tears. It is the way to parity with 
the beast. The graduation of lower into higher order is not 
the work of a day.** 

The quality of stoutly resisting evil goes to vindicate them 
who confront and resist it. Wliat follows from D. H. Cham- 
berlayne. Reconstruction Governor of South Carolina, is 
information at first hand :t 



*Thi9 has Iteeu recoornized by one of the most intelligent of the race: "When 
the old gray-haired veterans who followed Lee's tattered banner to Appomattox 
shall have passed away, the negro's best friend will have gone; fw the negro got 
more out of slavery than they did." Prof. W. H. Council. Forum-. .Tuly, 1899. 

**Dr. A. B. JIayo, of Massachusetts, in Circular No. 1 of the Bureau of 
Education, writes of "the negro in the South : "This people underwent the most 
rapid and effective transition from the depths of Pagan barbarism to the thres- 
hold of Christianity and civilization on record in the annals of mankind. The 
250 years of slavery had, indeed, been in itself a great university, and the history 
of tlie world may be challenged to present a spectacle so remarkable." 

tThe Hon. fa. H. Charaberlayne served in the llnion Army, during tlie War 
between the States, commanding a negro regiment, the 5th Massaehusetts. After 
the war he became Attorney General of South Carolina from 1868 to 1872, and 
after that the Governor. Atlantic Monthly. April. 190]. 

42 



"Under all the avowed motives for this policy (that of 
negro ascendency) lay a deeper cause than all the others ; the 
will and determination to secure party ascendency and con- 
trol at the South and in the nation by the negro vote.** . . . 
Eyes were never blinder to facts, and minds never more 
ruthlessly set upon a policy, than were Stevens and Morton, 
on putting the white South under the heel of the black South. 
. . . To this tide of folly and worse President Grant per- 
sistently yielded. . . . Those who sat in the seats, nom- 
inally of justice, made traffic of their judicial powers. No 
branch of the public service escaped the pollution." 

When in accepting the nomination for the presidency 
Grrant wrote : ' ' Let us have peace, ' ' what was intended was 
the peace of "Reconstruction," to which through two admui- 
istrations "Grant persistently yielded." The polluting tide 
was not stayed on the north shore of what had been secession. 
It was not practicable to make banditti honorable south of the 
Ohio and Susquehanna and send them all to Coventry in the 
North. 

What had escaped the spoliations of war now awaited the 
ilelirium of peace. That which the pahner worm had left, the 
locust had eaten, and that which the locust left, the canker 
worm consumed. The cynicism of events declared. The wages 
of heroism is death. It seemed as if Omnipotence had said 
to the victors, as at an earlier day was said to Satan, "Behold, 
all that they have is in thj^ power." To the devastation of 
field and fireside, it seemed necessary to add a parallel moral 
devastation. A government of corruption, by corruption, and 
for corruption, seemed heralded as the new birth. In her 
West African Studies, Miss Kingsley writes: "There are 
many who hold murder to be the most awful crime man can 
commit, saving thereby he destroys the image of his Maker. 
I hold that one of the most awful crimes one nation can com- 
mit upon another is destroying the image of justice." To 
defile the judiciary was to lay the axe to the root. To iinfasten 
the pent up forces, whose eruption would pour in power the 
elements finding profit in disorder, looked like design. The 
words of the Reconstruction Governor miveil the unjust mag- 
istrate, diligently deserving by his rulings the sentence pro- 
nounced by the Apostle to the Gentiles: "Sittest thou to 
judge me after tlip law, and commandest me to be smitten 
contrary to the law!" Was this slavery unchanged, or crim- 
inal activities released? There was "truth upon the scaf- 

**The fifteenth amendment "was part and parcel of carpet bag times — a part 
of the times when graft permeated every department of the Government, and an 
obscene brood of harpies, in the form of ignorant negro officials, were imposed 
upon the white people of the Southern States. The fifteenth amendment was not 
adopted to aid the negro, or to ameliorate his condition, but it was adopted for 
the purpose of irritating, vexing, and humiliating the South, by forcing corrupt 
government upon the Southern people." 

Hon. Henry F. Ashurst, of Arizona, in U. S. Senate, January 24, 1914, 
p. 2081. 

43 



fold;" there was the "league with death and agreement with 
hell." Alexander Pope declared (as clause in the moral law, 
the aphorism had been accepted) : "An honest man is the 
noblest work of God." Reconstruction reversed this and 
wrote: "An honest man is the most offensive work of the 
Creator." A reptile regime was ordained for the last garden 
as for the first. Reconstruction vindicates secession.* 

Stripped to the bone, the South was contending, like a 
disembodied spirit, for the truth which was her faith; con- 
tending against them who had foimd in the prostitution of 
politics the politics of prostitution ; against the incensed ap- 
peal to all that was low to put an end to all that was high. 
The man of the South, feeling the basis of life and faith 
giving way beneath his feet; beholding the prodigal soul of 
valor and the beautiful soul of sacrifice, laughed to scorn as 
of no more worth than to be ground up as offal for the barn- 
yard pile, or flung as carrion to the vultures ; when from an 
earth which was as the mire of melted wax under his feet, he 
looked up to a heaven of brass over his head, in despair, 
might have exclaimed : ' * My God, didst Thou, too, fall in the 
fray!" Smarting under the sharpness of the shears, the 
worthiest were made to feel themselves a kind of sport of the 
gods; played with as so many pawns on the chessboard of 
fate. Over courses checkmated in all directions is the unat- 
tainable attained. The winning of character is in not giving 
up ; and the power to hope beyond defeat which seems hope- 
less is the great world power. 

In the grim silence, with none to cheer, with Providence a 
mystery, with a whole civilized world looking coldly on, as is 
the wont when no material profit is perceived in looking 
otherwise, the battle was to reveal a character whose inherent 
force attritions could not waste. 

This battle of character is one which admits not of rest 
nor of retreat, but goes from conflict to conflict. On this 
battle, from the hills of Rockbridge broke forth, as from a 
new morn, the light of Lee. As there was a darkness of 
Egypt which could be felt, so this was a light which sank like 
speech into the last hope which turned to it and leaned on it. 
In that light was felt a supremacy, not at the mercy of events ; 
which for them who turned to it was as the grasp of a hand 
oiat of the cloud. 

The power of heroic patience said, or seemed to say: 
"Would yoii have a sea without a storm; a storm without a 
strain? It is not the blow which fells you, but weakness 
under it, which is humiliation. Accredited to meet the moral 
battle now hurled upon you, have faith in power to be given 

*The 'New York Tribune of June 13, 1874, speaks of South Carolina as 
"lying prostrate and helpless under the foot of the spoiler; her citizens impris- 
oned ; business ruined ; enterprise destroyed ; lands sold for taxes ; her people 
at the mercy of an ignorant and dishonest rabble; her legislators and her rulers 
a gang of unprincipled adventurers and shameless thieves." 

44 



you to emerge with a nobler sway; your measure shall now 
be taken by those pitiless fates, or furies, whose tuition is 
your test. Once more battle like soldiers, despising the pain 
for the sake of the duty. On you descends the highest op- 
portunity Heaven bestows; that of snatching moral victory 
from the jaws of ruthless overthrow. It is reserved for you, 
under the hammer of events, to grow stronger than the ham- 
mer. In winning the fight with defeat which seems irrevo- 
cable, the soul rises master and the things of time crouch as 
slaves before it. ' ' 

It were presumptuous in me, with any pretext of finality, 
to seek to penetrate the secret of a potency flowing, as to the 
world might seem, like the rhythm of the Nile, from impene- 
trable sources. To some undoubted elements of this domin- 
ion, of this attractive power of heroism for such as have a 
spark of it within them, it may not be unseasonable to advert. 
Lee wielded the power of a life held in trust for others. 
Public life is a trust ; yes, and private life is a trust. As Lee 
received the successes, so he received the adversities of life, 
as divine events appointed for discipline and duty. The fame 
of victory, the fate of subjugation, were received with the 
same unswerving breast. His own preeminence he held as 
tenant in trust. In trust he towered to the last as a lamp 
upon the height. At the foundation of this pervading sense 
of trust might be named a high born reverence for the in- 
trinsically high, intensified by high born sympathy with the 
wrestle of the weak. The contagion of this knightly grace 
fills the shadows of the Wilderness, where the shouts of war- 
riors proclaimed his strength of soul was as their own ; their 
own as his ; a picture history will not willingly let die. Rever- 
ence and sjTupathy, male and female, created He them, to be 
bone of one bone and flesh of one flesh. 

Faithfulness to trust, sincerity of sympathy, the religion 
of reverence, blended together in fearless fealty to truth. 
Doubtless in some such sense a Greek adage speaks of Truth 
as fellow-citizen of the gods. The truth of things as it came 
into his ken, with the vigorous commonsense of a great mind 
which sees things as they are, Lee translated into practical 
performance. The potency of an unfailing commonsense is 
glorified in his renown. High aims joined to the faculty to 
realize them, heroic force joined to heroic scorn for conse- 
quence to self, wherever fighting, under whatever name, I 
call the life of truth. Lee belongs to the mightiest of the 
mighty who have loved truth more than themselves. Before 
the inquisitors of Reconstruction he stood as might have 
stood the just and tenacious man of Horace. He abides as 
symbol of the deep mystery, that passion for truth must 
needs pass through passion. The assailants of the South 
made war in the name of "moral ideas." In the outlaw was 
the reality. For them who have not yet lost faith in a uni- 

45 



verse presided over by moral law, the image graven by these 
last years is one to thrill. One old man, aged less by strain 
of time than strain of deeds, yet bearing the weight of three 
score venerable years ; invested with no diadem of state ; no 
divinity of purple; no sceptre, were it the slightest, of tem- 
poral authority; without a voice in government; without a 
representative he could call his own, nor power to vote for 
one; without a soldier he could summon; without a weapon 
he could draw; from the Southern border of Pennsj^lvania 
to the Western border of Mexico, drew to him the honor of 
true hearts, with a spiritual sway akin to that of pontiffs. A 
silent magnanimity sat like a crown upon his brow. He for 
whom the unseen ideal is the one reality does not fear the 
power of any adversarj*. The severe majestic heights to 
which he attained were beyond the reach of temporal attri- 
tions. The raging force around him, powerful to outlaw, was 
powerless to profane. The poigTiant satire of events made 
him outlaw, when loyalty was rapine. He who has been 
rightly called "Undefeated by defeat," gazing from his out- 
law throne upon the orgies of "Reconstruction," mourn- 
fully might have cried, " Unvictorious by victory." What 
he reveals is the essence, not the semblance, of great life. 

The gaze of the world was turned to see how one who thus 
far had fought the good fight would finish the course. In so 
looking the world saw none of the mean tragedy of the de- 
spair which is selfish. The world saw the modesty of true 
greatness, and none of the importunate ci'aving for the lime- 
light which is hall mark of the sham. No press agency was 
pressed into service for him. The sweet uses of advertise- 
ment were unknown to him. The world saw one who with 
quietness of spirit gave the challenge to catastrophe. The 
world saw one, who in superlative disaster, towered above 
"envy, hatred and all uncharitableness." The world saw 
unpretentious eminence, unaffected piety, and in the sim- 
plicity of Sparta the majesty of Rome. The world saw 
struggle with superlative adversity by a soul still greater. 
The world saw a soul of battle, higher than battle won, vic- 
torious over battle lost. The dignity of that soul made the 
din of triumph over it seem paltry. The cross was laid on one 
who had the courage of the cross. 

To Lee might be applied the words spoken of another, 
whose moral reign has not yet ceased : 

"Exalted Socrates, divinely brave. 
Injured he felt, and dying he forgave, 
Too noble for revenge." 

As the Sabbath of his years drew to a close, reverently 
we watched, as with an even temper and a gentle grace, he 
stepped into the falling night. Strong men revered him for 
his greater strength. Little children loved him for his greater 

46 



love. Man destroys death when, like Lee, he builds up a life 
outside of death, and leaves to death a man of straw. Before 
our eyes he passed from strength to strength, from height to 
height. The hidden load of sorrow which consumed him, in a 
manner was made known by the knowledge that five years 
had sufficed to wear away the tine masonry of physical i^er- 
fection, which was the speaking casement of the finer spirit. 
When the end of earth came, he died as he had lived, looking 
humbly to his Maker. For them who watched it was as if 
they saw one descending to the grave, like a conqueror in the 
games, bending to receive the conqueror's reward. The heart 
which had vanquished fate had ceased to beat. No splendor 
of woe, no peal of mighty music, accompanied his bier; but, 
from end to end of the smitten South, the muffled drum of 
hearts bowed down for him was beating a funeral march, 
more eloquent than all the pageantries of royal woe, to which 
all the nations flock royally apparelled. Each added year the 
eye of faith has seen the finger of time fashioning the im- 
mortal wreath, and the ear of faith has almost heard the 
chisel of time, stroke by stroke, touch by touch, shaping the 
"eloquent proportions" of the spirit. A grace of beauty 
which is the blessedness of duty is his dominion. 

We have not in this new world the marvelous songs, which 
from Homer to Dante and Milton have been Bibles in verse; 
we have not the marvelous structures, which from Parthenon 
and Pantheon to York and St. Peter's, have been Bibles in 
Stone ; we have no Lion of Lucerne to tell in immortal stone 
the immortal story of devotion mito death. Yet is there one, 
the peer of the proudest of them all, whose strong wall shall 
last while time endures, whose pure page all time is powerless 
to deface. That masterpiece is the life of Lee. The hero of 
our Troy immortally shall live, whatever befall Ilium. There 
is your ideal ; you will rise as you honor this, and refuse to 
honor the antithesis of this. As you welcome the antagonist 
ideal you crucify your own. If, indeed, they for whom this 
masterpiece is Epos, repudiate their own, and in the modern 
House of Rimmon they, too, bend low before the machin- 
eries and prosperities of graft, then from the stately height of 
Arlington his shade, as the shadow of a glorious past, re- 
proachfully will tower to smite with silent scorn the impotent 
succession. 

Today at Lexington we view him, the campaign cloak mar- 
tially flung over him, as if he did but snatch the moments, to 
repair the strain of yesterday and prepare for the morrow's. 
In that grand repose, he still is warrior of the cause of which 
he is the likeness. In his marble sleep he bears its image and 
superscription. He and the cause for which he fought shall 
rise before the bar of history firm as marble and as pure. 



47 



C2/> 



IBenebtctton 

By Right Rev. Robert A. Gibson, D. D. 

(Private, Rockbridge Battery, Army of Nortliern Virginia.) 

THE Lord bles.s us and keep us a country reunited and 
indivisible. The Lord make His face to shine upon us 
and be gracious unto us as individuals and as a people. 
The Lord lift up His countenance upon us and give us victory, 
wisdom to help the weak to freedom and then peace — peace 
like the river's gentle flow, peace like the morning's silent 
glow — progressive peace. 

May the blessing of God Almighty, the Father, the Son 
and the Holy Ghost be amongst you and remain with you 
always. Amen. 



48