Page:Minutes of the Immortal Six Hundred Society 1910.djvu/24

Rh and cruel torture devised and executed by order of Secretary of War Stanton under the specious plea of retaliation, the authenticity for which was refuted by the testimony of Union prisoners of war and today remains so upon the war records. The United States Government stands indicted before the civilized nations of the world as having sanctioned this inhuman treatment of helpless prisoners, and unless condemned through some statutory law for reparation and renunciation of this brutality it will remain a lasting disgrace to our boasted Christian civilization and will some day raise its hydra head to plague our body politic as a precedent in justification for like treatment in case of war with some pagan nation.

It gives me great pleasure to look into your faces and clasp your hands as veteran soldiers of the most splendid example of heroic devotion to an undying principle and allegiance to a failing cause that the world has ever known. The remembrance of those days are now sanctified and hallowed by the tie that binds us together in this sacred union. When the sound of the guns of Sherman's army at Savannah were echoing through our casemates at Fort Pulaski as bells tolling the death knell of our loved cause and the effects of brutal retaliation by starvation was gnawing at our very vitals, the oath of allegiance was all that was required to allow us to breathe the free air of heaven, but yet under these trying ordeals all but eighteen remained true and spurned liberty at the cost of honor. The title we bear has in no sense been designated to clothe us with any exalted virtue or superior distinction either assumed or implied only so far as it represents the true spirit and loyal devotion to principles and honor that are immortal.

I regret to observe that there is a petty spirit of jealousy cropping out among our comrades who were not so unfortunate as to have endured prison life, speaking rather derogatory of our making so prominent the history of our enforced suffering.

We do not arrogate to ourselves any superiority for devotion to principle, loyalty to cause and country, or any self immolation that we do not cheerfully accord to them, and pay them the tribute to say that we believe that the same number of soldiers could have been taken from the rank and file of any of the Confederate armies who would have proved as true and endured the same with as much fortitude and defiant spirit as we did.