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304 host, which even in that supreme moment of triumph remembered that this gaunt remnant were the survivors of an army which but two years before had dealt them such staggering blows that there were more deserters from the Army of the Potomac than there were men for duty in the Army of Northern Virginia —that they were the survivors of that army which, from the Wilderness to Cold Harbor, had put hors du combat more men than Lee had carried into the campaign; which, from Cold Harbor to Five Forks, had again put hors du combat as great a number as was left him for the defence of Petersburg. Surely, it is meet that, with each recurring year, the survivors of such an army should gather themselves together to hear and know the truth. Thus shall the decorum of history be preserved and error be not perpetuated.

It is a duty, comrades, which we owe to ourselves, which we owe to our children, which we owe to our leader, whose fame shall shine with added lustre when the true nature of his difficulties shall be laid bare—when it shall be made clear to all, to what measure Lee the Soldier stood in the shade of powers to which Lee the Patriot rendered patriotic obedience. Yet of this are we sure, that it is a fame which malice cannot touch, which florid panegyric cannot injure—a fame which may well await the verdict of that time of which his ablest critic speaks with such prophetic confidence: "When History, with clear voice, shall recount the deeds done on either side and the citizens of the whole Union do justice to the memories of the dead and place above all others the name of him, who, in strategy mighty, in battle terrible, in adversity as in prosperity a hero indeed, with the simple devotion to duty, and the rare purity of the ideal Christian knight, joined all the kingly qualities of a leader of men."

Above all, it is duty, which we owe those dauntless spirits who preferred death in resistance to safety in submission.

"For a little while," says Dr. Draper, the Union historian, "those who have been disappointed clamor, then objurgation subsides into