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To the Grand Camp of Confederate Veterans of Virginia:

Before entering upon the discussion of the subject selected for consideration in this report, your Committee begs leave to tender its thanks to the Camp, and to the public for the many expressions it has received of their appreciation of its last two reports. These expressions have come from every section of the country, and they are not only most gratifying, showing as they do, the importance of the work of this Camp in establishing the justice of the Confederate cause; but that this work is also causing the truth concerning that cause to be taught to our children, which was not the case until these Confederate Camps effected that great result. Our report of 1899, prepared by your late distinguished and lamented Chairman, Dr. Hunter McGuire, was directed mainly to a criticism of certain histories then used in our schools, and to demonstrate the fact that the South did not go to war either to maintain or to perpetuate the institution of slavery, as our enemies have tried so hard to make the world believe was the case. That of 1900 was directed—

(1) To establish the right of secession (the real question at issue in the war) by Northern testimony alone, and

(2) To establish the fact that the North was the aggressor in bringing on the war, and by the same kind of testimony.

These two reports have been published, the first for two, and the second for one year, and as far as we know, no fact contended for in either has been attempted to be controverted. We feel justified, therefore, in claiming that these facts have been established.

Having then, we think, established the justice of the Confederate Cause, and that the Northern people were responsible for, and the aggressors in bringing on the war, and both of these facts by