Page:Minutes of the Immortal Six Hundred Society 1910.djvu/28

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Great principles live on, they cannot die, Where human rights make man a God, Though seeming dead they slumbering lie, To be a guide, an Aaron's chastening rod.

Out from the bloody past we live to see A specter who with warning hand, Upholds the laws, each severe decree Will bury greed and save our native land.

Our clarion cry, the rights of sovereign states, To mould and execute the people foreordained wills, Central power now stifles forensic debate, When bribery follows with attandant ills.

Comrades, ye fought for principles to us so dear, North and South and East and West, Bring year by year these questions near By ballot and by eloquence expressed.

Shall central power o'eride the laws of state, And ermined will make void our laws? Stern justice with impatience waits To crucify the docket's venal flaws.

The following letters were read by the secretary from absent comrades:

Mr. J. Ogden Murray, Charlestown, W. Va.

S. A..
 * I regret very much that I will not be able to be present at Mobile on the 26th. I had to go to a sanitarium in Richmond the 4th of February and was unable to get out to business until the 28th of March, But I am glad to say that I am physically O. K. again with business far behind. I would be pleased to meet our comrades as I recognize the fact that time is getting short and there can only be a few more annual meetings. I hope you all will have a good time. My heart will be with you though I am absent. If you meet any that remember me tell them I am still living and active enough to look after a division of railroad 125 miles in length. Hoping to hear from you on your return, I am, yours truly,

Shawsville, Va., March 29, 1910.

Maj. J. Ogden Murray, Charlestown, W. Va.

In reply to yours of recent date must beg to say that owing to the condition of my health I will have to deny myself the pleasure of meeting at Mobile with the old gallant true and tried band of 600, whose nerves and loyalty to the cause we loved so dearly was so severely tested by torture while in the hands of the Federal authorities as prisoners of war on Morris Island, Hliton Head and Fort Pulaski in 1864. I am proud that I was a member of the gallant band, notwithstanding the humiliations and trials and tortures we